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CULT STATUS ARRIVING John Patrick Shanley’s Joe Versus the Volcano was savaged when it was first released in 1990. The title didn’t help, but likely speeding the box office doom was the first sequence: the office in which Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan work is so dingy and depressing it’s easy to understand why a lot of the audience turned off—the atmosphere causes postnasal drip. Début jitters of director Shanley didn’t help, either, but once Robert Stack makes his diagnosis regarding Hanks’ condition, and Lloyd Bridges arrives with credit card generosity, and Ossie Davis chauffeurs Hanks around to purchase Safari attire, this fable about the benefits of water-tight luggage takes off. Is Hanks a creature from a parallel universe? He’s so us yet we aren’t like him. The catty derision of Ryan’s perpetual “if only” factor—if only she didn’t always sound whiny, if only she wore less lezzy attire, if only she had better hair, if only if only if only—reminds us that we’re only not like her, we don’t want to be like her. (Does anyone ever really hanker for or agree to be an adult tomboy in the sexless June Allyson and Debbie Reynolds tradition on display in You’ve Got Mail?) She’d agree, though, her simpatico with Hanks and Nora Ephron’s gift for clever duologues are mostly responsible for keeping her career alive after When Harry Met Sally, and Shanley, cannily aware of the annoying vibes, provides some tri-way surprises to keep her afloat. Hearing Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66’s “Mais Que Nada” triggers the regret no jazzy “easy listening” musician and his group have been more indifferently abused by moviemakers. Though the signature song manages to get audiences to sway their asses, it’s too often the only choice of Mendes’s material used and not indicative of his fuller mixes of melody and harmony into seductive rhythms and eclectic orchestrations. (There’s an argument he abuses himself by inserting, as executive music producer, the song in the animated Rio, albeit an updated version vocalized by his wife Gracinha Leporace.) For Shanley, abuse is expected: his latest fantasy Wild Mountain Thyme has been attacked by critics, especially a cranky one from the BBC. Could be a good omen: took years before Joe Versus the Volcano acquired cult status. Text COPYRIGHT © 2005 RALPH BENNER (Updated 12/2020) All Rights Reserved.
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