Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)
Directed by John Patrick Shanley
Hypochondriac Joe Banks finds out he has six months to live, quits his dead end job, musters the courage to ask his co-worker out on a date, and is then hired to jump into a volcano by a mysterious visitor.
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What critics compared Joe Versus the Volcano to
Compare Sandler with Tom Hanks in a similar position in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990).
Think of the lame “Joe Versus the Volcano” (1990), with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan; or of the shirtless Owen Wilson caper, “The Big Bounce” (2004); or of Anne Heche and Harrison Ford, eying each other warily, then snarling and scrapping, in “Six Days, Seven Nights” (1998).
Although many films and TV shows have dealt with office politics through the years ("Working Girl," "Working") and others have played off the mechanical drudgery of "worker bee" employment and its effects on the worker ("Falling Down," "Joe Versus the Volcano," "Brazil"), the increasing depersonalization of the corporate world and its dehumanizing effects on the employees during the 1990's makes films such as this one that much more timely and easy to identify with.
(Recall Hankís role from Joe Versus the Volcano.)
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At one point the camera pulls up to reveal ahead of him a long, winding road of shuffling bodies trudging to the daily grind, all looking like zombie extras in "Dawn of the Dead."
Joe Versus the Volcano is the latest dismaying evidence that playwright-turned-screenwriter John Patrick Shanley lucked out with Moonstruck.
The movie is written and directed by playwright John Patrick Shanley (he also won an Oscar for the Moonstruck screenplay).
Before Shanley was the Pulitzer-winning playwright of Doubt (but after he was the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Moonstruck), he wrote and helmed this big-budget comic-fairy-tale curiosity, whose narrative plays out like Woody Allen’s filmmaking evolution in reverse: it starts as smart, existential black comedy and ends in broad, zany caricature.
The writer-director, John Patrick Shanley , is the same man who wrote Norman Jewison's wonderful " Moonstruck " and the astonishingly bad " The January Man ."
John Patrick Shanley made a name for himself by scripting Moonstruck, the award- winning 1987 romantic comedy starring Cher and Nicolas Cage.
Written by John Patrick Shanley, who won an Oscar for his "Moonstruck" screenplay, this happy interlude also marks his directorial debut.