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JOE
VERSUS THE VOLCANO (Mar 1990)
Director, Writer: John Patrick Shanley.
Starring:
Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Lloyd Bridges, Abe Vigoda, Robert Stack,
Dan Hedaya.
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Sacrificial
Ham.
©
Jon Dunmore, 23 Nov 2005.
During
JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO, Tom Hanks's head took out a restraining order on
his hairstyle. His head won the case, which is why halfway
through the film, Hanks sports a halfway decent 'do - the
old hairstyle finding a home on Whitney Houston's head, of
which Houston is still unaware.
 Diagnosed
with a "brain cloud" which leaves him only months
to live, Joe (Hanks) is conned into leaping into a volcano to
appease an island god. Under this surface premise, there
is political intrigue and other such overwhelmingly inane
minutiae - purely McGuffin, as the film stabs at philosophizing
over Life itself. I'm afraid I might have fallen asleep,
but I'm more afraid that I might have been awake and only thought I was asleep. Philosophy, I can appreciate;
quirky, I can appreciate - add "romance" to the
mix and skew everything with irrationality over repressing
bodily fluids.
Meg
Ryan has three different hairstyles in JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO, playing three separate
characters, all of whom run across Joe and make him want her and make us want her - to stop. Though it alludes to her talent, each character
is only a variation on the ingratiating coquette persona
we have all grown to grimace over.
Long
before CAST AWAY, Tom Hanks finds himself adrift
on an endless ocean with nothing but a mindless entity for
companionship - Meg Ryan.
END |
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JOE
VERSUS THE VOLCANO (Mar 1990)
Director, Writer: John Patrick Shanley.
Starring:
Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Lloyd Bridges, Abe Vigoda, Robert Stack,
Dan Hedaya.
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