JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO (1990) ** I'm fascinated by volcanos, and I never like Tom Hanks much, so obviously I had high hopes. For about 15 minutes John Patrick Shanley does a really good job. Tasteful musical selections (Merle Travis, Ray Charles) set up scenes pointing, in an appealingly obvious if offhand manner, to the woes of the late 20th century: lousy employment opportunities, the prevalence of assholes, and the unnatural estrangement of the sexes. Tom Hanks is set up as a good guy; reasonably bright, semi-courageous, and well meaning. That's all fairly fundamental, but it's important, and none of it is the easiest thing to do. Then they fall into a terminal pattern of running scenes way too long, and the aesthetic standards of Wal-Mart. Shanley complements it all with highly questionable musical selections, and far too regularly. It's like every time they want to change the mood they just put on another record, from a pretty pedestrian collection. It turns out that what Hanks wants most from life is a really bad haircut and a wardrobe full of appalling clothing--actually they might have had something there, if they'd just run the right direction with it. Despite it all, or probably because of it, Meg Ryan (dumb secretary), Meg Ryan (horrid poet), and Meg Ryan (philosopher princess) are all terribly taken with spiffy Tom. Those are the bimbos attracted that junk, and people still buy it? The star and love interests were probably dictated by the studio, but Ossie Davis, Lloyd Bridges and Abe Vigoda are slipped into the periphery, meaning that Hanks is always the worst actor in the scenes strictly involving guys. The movie wastes far too much time with scenes on, for example, luggage. Several promising aspects of the script, the Druid-Judeo-Polynesian culture jumps to mind, are left undeveloped. I mean, at the big ceremony, why can't they be imbibing Scotch by the coconut shell, singing "Greensleeves," dancing a hula, and spinning dreidels? Missed opportunities, I'm telling you, and my version would have worked way better with the desperately fake and simplistic sets.
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