from The Onion's A.V. Club
Joe Versus The Volcano (1990)
What it tries to do: Joe Versus The Volcano could be called the original Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romantic comedy, except that romantic comedies are never brave enough to try something this strange and enchanting. Writer-director John Patrick Shanley attempts to top the whimsical magic of his Moonstruck script with wild flights of fancy, leading Hanks and Ryan (who plays three roles) to a tropical island where the Polynesian-Jewish natives (led by Abe Vigoda!) love orange soda.
Why it failed: Clearly not everyone was enchanted: The New York Times, for one, tagged it as the flattest comedy since Howard The Duck, and other reviews weren't much kinder. Sandwiched between Punchline, The 'Burbs, Turner & Hooch, and Bonfire Of The Vanities, Joe Versus The Volcano appeared during Hanks' biggest losing streak since early in his career, and for all the film's loveable eccentricities, it tends to get lumped in there for posterity.
Why it's worth seeing: If it works on you, the film conveys nothing less than the joy of being alive—it openly fantasizes about breaking the shackles of the workaday world and finding adventure, romance, and beauty that exist beyond the suck-suck-sucking of florescent lights. And only the stone-hearted can avoid being touched by Hanks adrift on the ocean, facing dehydration and certain death, merrily strumming a song on his ukulele without a care in the world.
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2 comments:
This was, perhaps, my first romantic comedy. And for that reason alone, I would love it to pieces, as it sent me down a road that I've thoroughly enjoyed. But what I most love about this film is what the AV Club calls the director's "flights of fancy". The fact that the crack in the wall of the office is the same pattern as the lightning bolt and the same shape as the lava trail and the same configuration as the... And while it may not come together as a meaningful whole where that jagged pattern really represents all that much, the tropes and cleverness and attempts to do something fun and different and, well, fanciful please me to no end.
And that moon. Optical illusion books tell me that the moon only seems huge on the horizon with relation to other objects, like buildings, and the moon on the sea would not look that gigantic and that luminous. But I truly like to think that it should and that, therefore, it really does.
I saw this when I was too young for romantic comedies (like, ten or something?) and I remember thinking it was hilarious.
Also, what the hell is wrong with Howard the Duck, AV Club?
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