Call it a Chestertonian fairy tale. This film explores a “soul sick” man’s growing awareness of the fact that he is no longer interested in his own self, but in other people and other things around him instead. This realization is then lit like a match when he takes up a mysterious stranger’s offer to set out on an adventure. The ensuing exploits lead to further awakening, falling in love, learning to see, trying to pray, and taking steps by faith. At the film’s end, you’ll find yourself looking at the world around you as perhaps just a little more enchanted. If almost the whole world is asleep, Joe Versus the Volcano asks what it would mean to be one of the few people who are awake.
—Jeremy Purves
- Directed by: John Patrick Shanley
- Produced by: Kathleen Kennedy Frank Marshall Roxanne Rogers Teri Schwartz Steven Spielberg
- Written by: John Patrick Shanley
- Music by: Georges Delerue Peter Gordon
- Cinematography by: Stephen Goldblatt
- Editing by: Kenneth Wannberg Richard Halsey
- Release Date: 1990
- Running Time: 102
- Language: English
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