(1990) A romantic fantasy, with lots of collateral damage, from writer/director John Patrick Shanley takes us from "Once upon a time" to "They lived happily ever after."

Lie awake and dream: Having sold his soul four-and-a-half stultifying years ago to the company store for $300 a week, inside a nightmare from which he can't escape, Joe Banks (Tom Hanks), in the advertising department of a medical supply company - American Panascape, home of the rectal probe, on Staten Island - quits, leaving his tyrannical boss, Frank Waturi (Dan Hedaya), after his physician, Dr Ellison (Robert Stack), informs him of having a very rare, incurable disease, a brain cloud, with a prognosis of six months to live without symptoms or pain.

Dr Ellison advises Joe to live well in the time left, though Joe has no savings for a vacation, having "spent everything on doctors." (What? He had no medical insurance from his employer? And this was long before the current crisis in health care.) Ray Charles sings, "I'm tired of living, but I'm scared of dying," from "Ol' Man River."

Finally having the courage to ask DeDe (Meg Ryan), a brunet also in his department, for a date, and taking Robinson Crusoe, Romeo and Juliet, The Odyssey, and his ukulele with him, Joe sets off on his adventure; but when he tells DeDe of his circumstances, she turns away: "I can't handle it, Joe."

At his crummy apartment suddenly appears Samuel Harvey Graynamore (Lloyd Bridges), the wealthy owner of a company that manufacturers supercomputers, with a proposition to the former firefighter (before Joe began working for American Panascape): in exchange for an open-expense credit card in New York City and LA for a few days, first-class airfare, and a cruise on a yacht to an island in the South Pacific, Joe is to jump into a volcano as a human sacrifice.

The island of Waponi Woo has bubureau, a rare mineral Samuel needs for his computers; the Waponi - a mixed culture of Polynesians, Hebrews, Celtics, and Romans, who enjoy orange soda - need a hero to appease their god, Big Woo, in less than three weeks. Why not? What's he got to lose?

In the Big Apple, Joe's limousine driver, Marshall (Ossie Davis), guides him to the best clothing retailers and other outlets for shopping; Joe purchases four handcrafted steamer trunks as well for his journey. They will serve him very well.

At the airport in LA he's met by Samuel's red-headed daughter Angelica (Meg Ryan), who refers to herself as a "flibbertigibbet" as well as a painter and poet: "Long ago the delicate tangles of his hair/ Covered the emptiness of my hand." She's also an angry, fearful woman dependent upon her father's money. Joe politely declines her offer to spend the night with him in his hotel room before he sets sail on the Tweedle Dee, a yacht captained by Angelica's half sister Patricia (Meg Ryan), a blonde with plenty of self-confidence and seamanship. However, she confesses even she'd been bought by her father to skipper this voyage (otherwise a mystery) for the price of getting the yacht as her own in return.

To each of these female characters portrayed by Ryan, Joe says: "Haven't we met before?" (Just an inside joke or suggestion of a reoccurring dream?)

To Patricia's question of how long he expects to stay on the island, Joe answers: "For the rest of my life." Before they reach the island, a typhoon destroys the yacht, casting them adrift. In the hotel room, on the beach, and on the raft while Patricia slumbers, Joe remains alert, watchful. In her only positive remark concerning her father, Patricia tells Joe of her father's belief that the few people in the world who are awake live in "constant, total amazement."

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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