Throwback Thursday: Volunteers (1985)
Nicholas Myer's send-up of the Peace Corps is confused, but gets by on the inherent charms of its cast.
Hey, everyone! I’m back! I’m going to try posting with a bit more regularity, and to that end, I’m instituting a new thing I’m tentatively calling “Throwback Thursday” where I review a movie 20 years or older. These will be short, and I want to focus on lesser known or forgotten fare. Let me know in the comments if you would like to see more.
As far as 80’s comedies go, you could do a lot worse, but you could also do a lot better, which makes it difficult to really recommend 1985’s Volunteers when in the same year you have Clue — I mean, why go to Red Robin when the Shake Shack is right down the road, right?
Tom Hanks (hair at maximum floppiness) plays Lawrence Bourne III a gambling addicted, boorishly mannered Yalee. After getting in deep debt to some deadly gangsters, he makes a quick escape by joining the newly founded Peace Corps and ends up in remote Thailand village. Along for the ride as well is John Candy’s all-American boy scout, Tom Tuttle and Rita Wilson’s doe-eyed Kennedy fangirl, Beth Wexler. The trio is tasked with building a bridge, the construction of which attracts the attentions of local Opium drug lord and a group guerrilla Communists — as you would expect, shenanigans and unexpected romance ensues.
Let’s get this out of the way first, almost everything involving the Asian characters is probably really offensive, it’s in that quaint naïve way some older movies have, like the Hope and Crosby Road pictures and Big Trouble in Little China. The ugly Americanism is part of the joke, the film’s message is that they shouldn’t try to change the people, but help and learn from them. But, let’s be honest, this is a silly comedy about Hank and Wilson falling in love while outsmarting a comic book super villain, complete with a henchwoman who just stepped out of Mortal Kombat. Well, sometimes it’s about that.
Other times it’s about John Candy’s character getting brainwashed into becoming a communist spy. This subplot has the single best gag in the film involving a brilliant time-cut, which, if you were following the Trump x Madamni memes online, you may have seen a clip of, and if you did, then you’ve seen the best scene in the whole movie.
The second-best gag involves a fourth-wall breaking joke about subtitles. It’s funny, but also highlights how the humor is constantly pin-balling between Zucker Brothers zaniness and romantic comedy, leaving the story confused. In regards to the latter, Hanks and Wilson have great chemistry (no surprise), but based on the poster and image on the HBO Max, I was expecting (re: hoping for) a buddy comedy with Hanks and Candy. Hanks spends more time with Ah-Toon (Gete Watanabe), he’s funny at times, but his only function is translating and being Bourne’s wingman.
The film isn’t sure what it wants to be, and jumps from one premise to the next: college comedy, buddy movie, The Bridge Over the River Kwai spoof, exotic romantic comedy, and cartoon antics. The script was allegedly in production for six years and it shows. It feels like a movie where every scene has been transplanted from one of a dozen different scripts. Still, director Nicholas Myers (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) brings an assuredly steady hand, and that, combined with an uber-charming Tom Hanks and unhinged John Candy make for a decent enough time, as long as all you’re looking for is some feel good 80’s comedy vibes. Also, that bridge blowing up is pretty sharp, too.
Tom Hanks has said that if the Philadelphia script came around to him today, he wouldn't do it. I'm certain he'd say the same about this one.
This was also the sort of thing that John Candy wanted to get away from, which is why he did JFK. Had he not died, he might've had a chance to reinvent himself as a dramatic actor.