Movie Review of the Week

The copy on the packaging for Joe Versus the Volcano describes this Spielberg film as a comedy, a "laughquake." I have a new rule that does not allow me to watch a movie described as a laughquake, but I'm pretty sure the copy writer never watched this movie. There are some comic elements, some funny lines, Abe Vigoda as a tribal chief, but there is so much more.

It opens in a colorless parking lot of a factory--home of the rectal probe--and hundreds of employees are trudging through mud, muck, and trash to get to their jobs where they will spend the day being sucked up by bad lighting and stale air. While Joe is making the zig-zag trek from his car to the monolithic factory, he trips on something and rips the sole from his shoe. He reaches the office, and the secretary (Meg Ryan) asks, "What's wrong with your shoe?" And Joe replies, "I'm losing my soul." That single line sets up the film. Joe is losing his soul. He is being sucked up by his job and his surroundings and the things he is missing in life.

After being diagnosed with a brain cloud, a phony-baloney condition that is apparently terminal, he quits his job and begins the only adventure of his life--he travels to a remote island to be sacrificed to a volcano with a pretty girl (Meg Ryan again) operating the boat and a collection of trunks on board. A crazy storm destroys the boat, leaving Joe and Patricia to float seemingly until death on the steamer trunks lashed together by ropes. Joe is weak and parched. With Patricia asleep for days, he is alone and struggling when he witnesses the rising of the moon along the horizon line. He sees its birth, so to speak, stands up, and calls to God.

The couple makes it to shore, encounters the silly tribe who fear the volcano, are married by the chief, and just before they jump into the wrathful volcano, they are rescued by a rumbling eruption, set out to sea again on their steamer trunks. Joe finally finds life after being willing to sacrifice it, and when Patricia says "I wonder where we'll end up?" Joe replies, "Away from the things of man, my love. Away from the things of man."

A laughquake? If I had to make up a word to describe Joe Versus the Volcano, I think I'd form something else. This is the story of a lost man who follows the twists and turns of his life in order to find meaning. It's more of a zig-zagquake. No, I don't like that either. Maybe it's more like a soulsearcher. Oh, I don't know. I guess it doesn't need a made up word. It's just a movie that plainly shows the human condition--we all look for something more than bad lights and colorless days to make up life, don't we? We all look to travel "away from the things of man."

As a parting treat, here is Joe singing his cowboy song.