Thursday, September 9, 2010

Joe Versus The Volcano Briefly Reviewed

By Ted Mcbride

After the cancellation of Bosom Buddies, the show that gave him his start, Tom Hanks starred in his share of goofy comedies throughout the late eighties and early nineties. While Big and Turner and Hooch are both entirely watchable movies in their own right, Joe Vs. The Volcano is the one that stands as one of the all time must download movies.

So what makes this one so special? Well for starters, while Big and Turner and Hooch both did an excellent job showcasing Hanks' abilities as a comic actor, Joe Vs. The Volcano is a little more demanding of the actor. Here, he's asked not simply to provide a few funny moments, but to be cast in the shoes of the everyman. At the beginning of the movie, Joe is seen in a situation most of us will find familiar: selling his life away for "three hundred dollars a week".

We start off in a dismal state of affairs, with Joe experiencing an existential crisis, having no idea why he was put on earth. This is driven home by the excellent production design of Beetlejuice's set designer Bo Welch. The factory where Joe works, sitting in the middle of a vast expanse of muddy terrain, is simply disgusting and soul crushing.

The hypochondriac Joe quits this job when he's told by a doctor that he has a "Brain Cloud" which will kill him in five or six months. Into Joe's life comes an industrialist who offers him the opportunity to "Live like a king and die like a man".

The industrialist uses an island, the Waponi Woo, for mining, and in order to keep the people happy, he must sacrifice someone to their volcano God, lest he get mad and blow the whole island up. The chief of these people would rather someone from his own tribe do the deed, but they all seem a bit too cowardly. Joe is more than happy to give his life and die like a man, since it's that or waste away on a hospital sickbed.

This scenario gives Joe his life back. From here he becomes more daring, more appreciative of the human experience. Therein lies what makes this movie so special, it's core philosophy: Stop worrying and enjoy life for what it is, because it's really pretty great.

The look of the film is similarly wonderful. Bo Welch really sends it out of the park on this one. The film takes place in a sort of fantasy mirror universe of our own. Taking cues equally from Dali and Andy Warhol, the film looks like a living dream.

SPOILER! The original ending of the film had the industrialist and the doctor getting what they deserve for pulling one over on Joe. It's probably better that they went with another take, because while those two characters do serve as the villains, in a sense, they also serve as Joe's saviors, giving him his life back. - 40728

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