Goldman wrote this back in the 1970s – I would have loved to read that version. How much did it change? This one doesn’t work, even on the page, although with the right stars you could imagine it being quite fun. Goldman blamed the wine factor – young kids don’t really care about wine, but do they care about jewels either, and they understood Romancing the Stone, or arcs of the covenant, and they loved Raiders. I think the problem is people wouldn’t kill for wine – maybe the wine needed to be so valuable it was worth killing for, they way they do for the stone and the arc. Goldman makes it a chase for formula which is in the wine but the baddies don’t realise this until very late – too late.
The banter is okay – Goldman was better with bromance than romance, it’s very star dependent (and the film didn’t come up with the goods – the male lead feels written for Paul Newman more than anyone else). I liked the stuff in the Scottish highlands, especially with castles and in loch ness – it reminded me of the Tintin comic The Black Island. The adventures on the French riviera are less good - the final sequence with the villain aging rapidly is as dumb on the page as it was on screen. Fans of Goldman will enjoy (or be annoyed by) his little personal touches: references to Jo Jo the Dog faced boy, the hero has a back with a slipped disc (like Goldman in real life), the importance of red wine in some people’s lives.
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