| Joe Versus the Volcano | | Cast : | Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan | | Director : | John Patrick Shanley | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | March 09, 1990 | | DVD Released Date : | February 08, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Japanese (Subtitled), Thai (Subtitled), Chinese (Subtitled), Korean (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 28, 2005 | | Summary | Sixteen Tons of quirky fun! | Content
 | About as far from "Bachelor Party" as Tom Hanks could get..thank goodness. "Joe" is an endlessly weird, imaginative, and achingly romantic comedy about heroism, fear, hope and longing. It has a big heart and an old movie-styled grandeur(like something from MGM in the '50's)that lends it a sparkling kind of mysticism. Hanks and Meg Ryan(in three completely different roles)obviosuly put a lot of trust in writer-director John Patrick Shanley, and he rewards them by never allowing them to look silly(even while on a island in the Pacific ruled by Abe Vigoda!). The film seems to harken back to a more innocent time(maybe from youth)and it plays with the lead character's innocence and naivete in very sly and funny ways. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 21, 2005 | | Summary | Joe Versus the Volcano | Content
| This is absolutely the worst movie I have ever seen. It deserves no stars, but this rating system won't allow me to give it less than one star. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 29, 2005 | | Summary | How to make a small movie big. | Content
| Being anything but a big budget movie "Joe vs the volcano" with its' theatrical effects (it's like watching a stageplay at times, for example the "lost at sea"-scenario, and some of the shots of the town) -in fact it's a bit tricky to explain the movie, difficult to categorize it being some kind of a peculiar witty fablish drama. I find the soundtrack of the movie beautiful and haunting with its' fabolous main theme, but in fact I have no idea if it was intended to have that effect, giving a melancolich-feel (half sad, half dreamy). This story being as unrealistic and (as mentioned) "fablish" as it may be, well, I still can't help taking it serious based on the fact that the story is containing the deepest emotions around the tragedy of loneliness in the characters we get introduced here to. The movie is full of personality and charm. But this including also the despair (this is about a man who is lost in life) -and the lead character (Joe) first learns to appreciate his life when he is told he has only six months left to live. he becomes the young man he used to be "full of piss and vinegar" as he himself says it. He somehow wakes from a nightmarish state of mind, and to be frankly of the US. Some traumatic events working as a fireman in his past made him become a worried and hypocondriac (correct spelled?) man until this.
The movie and the story being so different, gripping in its' "surrealness" -and so well acted by the entire cast is what makes it so great!
As you might have realized I find it far more than being just a peculiar comedy, it takes you out of the dark and tells us there is far more to this life, this world, than the machineries of mankind, the buildings and the work. There is more to life than all this, and it's out there, and it shouldn't go to waste. The beauty of this movie lies in the dialogue between the people that meet for real, and also in the nature around them (the ocean and the stars), characteristic and amazing filming to capture all this, it's like watching a dream at times.
A fantastic, and different movie-experience; One of my absolute favorites! Not like anything else I've ever seen! |
| Rating | | | Date | May 04, 2005 | | Summary | A QUIRKY, BOLD, MASTERPIECE OF A MOVIE... | Content
| Some might quibble with the term "Epic" being applied to a movie that contains a fed-up sexual prostetics maker throwing himself into a volcano worhipped by partly Jewish, orange pop swilling, tropical island dwellers. So we'll leave the label fixing to more jaded hands if we must, but dammit--this is one helluva movie all the same.
A string of excellent scenes does not a great movie make. Ask M. Night Shazzam-your-ham or whatever his name is. And don't mistake me--Joe Versus the Volcano has a TON of great scenes. But it has something that movies like The Village or (to delve deeper into the pre-history of "TOM HANKS"--back when he was still just "Tom Hanks") The Burbs do not: a through-line with real heart.
Who can resist the opening sequence? Who could forget the luggage salesman? Who could not be moved by the scene with the moon on the ocean.
More to the point, who could not love the theme that pulses through this over-looked classic: Hope?
Joe Versus the Volcano has long been one of my personal favorite movies. Is it a movie for all time? Who knows? Who cares?
If you haven't seen it, take a look at this movie. You will not regret it.
I give Joe Versus the Volcano my full recommendation. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 25, 2005 | | Summary | Marooned Without You - Lit in Joe | Content
| This is a film. Such a film!
Nevertheless, it ties in literature wonderfully, foreshadowing events and themes later revealed in the movie by the three books that Joe Banks (Tom Hanks) takes with him as he quits his dead-end job: "Robinson Crusoe", "Romeo and Juliet", and "The Odyssey".
"Robinson Crusoe", of course, is the perfect foreshadowing for the shipwreck; "R+J" for the romance and sacrifice of life in fulfillment of the demands of love (particularly on the overlooked courage of Patricia (Meg Ryan), who like Ruth in the Bible goes where Joe "goeth"); and "Odyssey" for the overall theme: Courage and an Existentially-Satisfying Life must go hand in hand.
Okay, maybe that's not exactly the theme, and maybe that's not how I would put it upon further reflection, but I'll end by pointing out one odd thing: Homer, Shakespeare, Defoe - these ancients understood courage and masculinity far better, apparently, than any more recent author, and that's why Shanley chose them.
With John Eldredge's "Wild at Heart" (completely unrelated to David Lynch's) spreading in popularity, perhaps this is a very good movie for Christian men to watch to reinforce Eldredge's points. |
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