The Jewel of the Nile

The end of Romancing the Stone found the likeable team of Turner and Douglas sailing off down a Manhattan avenue in their schooner. By Jewel, they are comfortably afloat in the south of France, and agreeing to go their separate ways after she is approached by a handsome sheik to write up his story and thus promote his accession to leader of some unspecified Middle Eastern kingdom. When the schooner gets blown out of the water, it's then a ripping chase, in and out of prisons, up and down the desert in an effort to locate the famous 'Jewel' which alone will restore the rightful leader to his people. The film is still as crazy and hectic as its predecessor, without ever quite coming up to the bench mark set by the original. More distressing is that, like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it falls into a kind of unthinking racism, in which all Arabs are seen as dishcloth-wearing fanatics, all screaming 'Aieee' and bent on murdering An infidel for Allah. CPea.