Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)

Film: Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)

Stars: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Abe Vigoda, Dan Hedaya, Ossie Davis

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Meg Ryan: click here to learn more about Ms. Ryan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Meg Ryan has one of the most traditional star paths of any of the 12 actresses we profiled this season.  Similar to 1990's movie stars Demi Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio, & Julianne Moore, she got some early work in soap operas, which were a huge business in the 1980's (they would hit their commercial peak as a format in 1984) and were a great launchpad for movie stars, but a lot of the rest of her 1980's output was honestly forgettable, taking on girlfriend roles and co-lead love interest parts in 1980's pictures like Top Gun and Innerspace.  Innerspace, though, was a hit, and Top Gun was a phenomenon, so her parts continued to increase, and so a breakout role like When Harry Met Sally in 1989 was inevitable.  When Harry Met Sally was such a big deal that Ryan would spend the next decade continually being compared to it (like Julia Roberts with Pretty Woman), but unlike Roberts, as we'll find out, Ryan was a much more consistent box office performer in the next decade, even in movies like Joe Versus the Volcano (the first of her three outings with Tom Hanks and the only one I'd never seen before focusing on her this month) that audiences at the time were apathetic about, though it's worth noting that this is perhaps the only one of Ryan's films (give or take In the Cut) that has since been rescued by cinephiles as something of a cult film.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Joe (Hanks) who works a lifeless job at a factory where he seems to inhabit virtually no joy.  When a doctor (Stack) tells him he has just six months to live, Joe takes this as a sign from the universe to tell off his boss (Hedaya) and ask out his coworker Dede (Ryan), who is enraptured with his spontaneity but can't handle his impending death, and breaks things off.  This is when things take a turn for the weird, as a wealthy man named Samuel Graynamore (Bridges) shows up and offers him several pleasures (a fancy hotel, first class tickets, a new wardrobe) if Joe will jump into a volcano to appease an island deity from an island that has rare minerals he needs for his business (just go with me on this, it seems more logical than it sounds in the movie).  Joe, knowing he's about to die anyway, takes him up on it, and goes along buying fancy clothes, as well as four waterproof steamer trunks that seem superfluous to the plot until much later.  He meets Graynamore's daughter Angelica (also Ryan), who shows him around and seems to ignite a new passion for life in him, and then he takes a boat with Graynamore's other daughter Patricia (once again Ryan) to the island, where he falls in love with Patricia along the way.  At the island he meets the village chief (somehow played by iconic star of The Godfather Abe Vigoda), jumps into the volcano with Patricia after they are wed...and the island rejects their sacrifice, sinking instead, and they are floating around the ocean, rescued by the steamer trunks, with Patricia revealing to Joe that he was set up, and the doctor was paid by her father to trick him...and he is not, in fact, going to die, but can have a happy life with her.

This movie sounds weird, and it gets weirder.  Joe Versus the Volcano is billed as a romantic-comedy, but it's not particularly funny and until the last twenty minutes, you'd be forgiven for not thinking that it's all that romantic (remember, Joe has romanced three different women, even if they are played by the same actress, so his connection to Patricia is only in the final quarter of the flick).  But it is interesting, frequently talking about the pressure we put upon ourselves to live a meaningful life, when so much of our existence is either intended to be dreary (most people work jobs that they don't care that much about were it not for the paycheck) or are totally outside of our control (our good health, whether or not we find romance or close friends).  After some consideration, I liked this-it's trying to do something different, which is always a moment I'll applaud, even if it isn't remotely successful on all of the levels it's intending to be.

I also really liked Ryan in this, as she's the best part of the movie (even if the shock value of Vigoda showing up in the role he does was maybe my favorite WTF scene).  She aces all three of these women, all with ridiculous (but solid) accents, and is the funniest part of the movie.  In some ways you can see a direct line to what she's doing here to what Cameron Diaz was achieving in Being John Malkovich a few years later.  And her chemistry with Hanks is wonderful.  Nora Ephron had to have noticed that to make it work in the best-loved of Ryan's movies after-Harry (Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail), and while this isn't the classic that those two pictures (two of my most-watched films of all-time) is, it's a quirky older sister that feels justified next to them.