"Joe Versus the Volcano" - Film Review
Before You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle, there was Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in Joe Versus the Volcano, an oft-forgotten movie that was the beginning of their run of ‘90s romantic comedies. Not long after winning an Oscar for his Moonlight script, John Patrick Shanley wrote and directed Joe Versus the Volcano. The film was also his directorial debut.
Joe Versus the Volcano, quite simply, is odd. The audience meets Joe Banks (Hanks), a depressed, exhausted, and chronically sick man who works as an advertising librarian at American Panascope. His office is essentially a dungeon where he keeps a tropical light atop his desk in an attempt to brighten his dreary existence. He visits a doctor who tells him he’s going to die of a brain cloud in six months or less. Following his doctor’s advice to live the rest of his life as well as he can, Joe quits his soulsucking job and finally asks his coworker, DeeDee (Ryan in the first of her three roles in the movie), to go out on a date.
Joe’s date with DeeDee does not go as he’d hoped it would, and afterward Joe is greeted by Samuel Graynamore (Lloyd Bridges), who has a proposition for him. Graynamore will pay Joe as much money as he asks for, but in exchange, Joe must throw himself into a volcano on Waponi Woo, a small island in the Pacific. Graynamore needs a rare mineral called bubaru in order to manufacture superconductors, and Waponi Woo will allow Graynamore to have as much bubaru as he wants if he solves their problem–they need a human sacrifice to appease their fire gods. No one who lives on the island wants to jump into the volcano, but Joe agrees to be the sacrifice, knowing his days are numbered.
warner bros.
Ryan’s two other roles are Graynamore’s daughters, Angelica (a self-proclaimed flibbertigibbet), and the much more serious Patricia, who will captain the boat Joe takes to Waponi Woo. Each of the different characters Ryan plays gives her a new opportunity to steal the scene. She is wonderfully magnetic as sweet girl-next-door DeeDee, chaotic Angelica, and headstrong Patricia. The fact that Ryan plays these three different characters gives the audience an idea of just how strange Joe Versus the Volcano aims to be. It’s off-kilter, but earnestly and purposefully so. A bizarrely life-affirming movie masquerading as a romantic comedy.
Joe Versus the Volcano stands in a genre of its own. Its ridiculousness cannot be contained or neatly boxed into one of the usual categories. Its uniqueness makes it soar. The fantastical oddities are kept grounded by the inimitable duo of Hanks and Ryan. The film proudly wears its heart on its sleeve, proclaiming that this world is beautiful, and that it’s a terrible shame when that is forgotten.
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