By Geno McGahee
In 1990, Tom Hanks was on rise in Hollywood with the films BIG and TURNER & HOOCH coming out the year before. The next movie is probably the one that he’d like to forget and is mostly forgotten by people: JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO. It had a 25 million dollar budget and made 39.4 million, making it profitable but not a huge success.
Joe Banks (Tom Hanks) works at a shitty job in a dimly lit office and is miserable. He always thinks he’s sick and he keeps going to the doctors without any illness found. This constant absence from work doesn’t make his boss, Mr. Waturi (Dan Hedaya), happy and Hedaya is one of the only bright spots in this entire movie. He did his best with the material he was given, but this film was grating very early on.
Dr. Ellison (Robert Stack) tells Joe that he has six months to live and that he has a brain cloud. Joe goes back to his job and quits and then asks out DeDe (Meg Ryan). OK, I really like Meg Ryan and she is very good most of the time, but she cannot do a character with an accent and she is a terrible character actor. She starts off with a bad New Yorker accent and it’s bad…not Shelly Long bad, but not good for sure.
Depressed, Joe goes home and is visited by Graynamore (Lloyd Bridges), a rich guy with a business proposal. He offers to give Joe an endless supply of money if he jumps into a volcano to appease a tribe on an island. Considering he is going to die in six months, the deal is taken and Joe is now driving around in a limo with Marshall, played by Ossie Davis. Davis proves to be another bright spot in this film. He is always good, even when he’s in a shitty film.
After spending some money, Joe meets Graynamore’s daughter, Angelica, once again played by Meg Ryan and, once again, having another annoying and unconvincing accent. She is an artist and a painter and rambles on about her dad. It is painful to watch and hard to get through, but in the interest of the people, so you don’t have to suffer through it, I had to proceed so I could do this review.
The next stop for Joe is to be picked up by a yacht and Patricia (AGAIN PLAYED BY MEG RYAN!) and they are off to the island where they are completely unsophisticated but drink orange soda. I guess they thought it was funny. It wasn’t and there really isn’t anything funny in this film.
On the island, they meet this tribe and they are drinking orange soda and they wear hats made of the soda cans. No, still not funny, in case you are wondering. The Chief of the Waponis (Abe Vigoda) meets Joe and sometimes Vigoda can be sort of funny but not here. You can tell that he’s trying his best, but it’s just not there.
Out of nowhere, Patricia announces her love for Joe and vice versa and the two decide to jump into the volcano together. Both of them dying would be a good way to wrap up this movie, especially if DeDe and Angelica showed up and jumped in too, but that didn’t happen, sadly enough. Joe and Patricia and blown out of the volcano and live and then they learn that Joe was tricked and he’s not dying.
JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO is a terribly unfunny and annoying film with the worst performance(s) from Meg Ryan ever. The writer and director, John Patrick Shanley, doesn’t have many hits under his belt, but he did write ALIVE, which was a good film and wrote CONGO too, which was not a good movie, but not bad compared to JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO.
Hanks was seen as a comedic actor only at this time and they tried to emphasize that here with several scenes of him overacting and doing silly things in hopes for some comedy to materialize. At one point he’s dancing and it goes on forever, and then he thrusts his ass at the camera. I wonder if the director demanded that. “Thrust that Hanks ass at the camera! That’s what the people want!” I’m glad my television isn’t one of those 3D models. That would have been Hanks ass overload.
This is about as bad as it gets and I disliked it to the point where I almost got angry at the film and especially Meg Ryan. She can be funny and endearing, but what shit she was here. Avoid this one at all costs. It’s annoying, stupid, unfunny and is easily the worst film in the career of Hanks (I think).
