What a goofy, weird little comedy. When my cousins were deciding what films to give me, Kevin scoffed at this suggestion from his wife, a movie she has a soft spot for and he apparently thinks is trash. Heh. I’d been meaning to see it for a while as I went through a major Meg Ryan phase for a while but somehow skipped this one, so I encouraged her to go through with the recommendation, and I’m glad I did.
While I probably didn’t love it like she does, I did quite enjoy its quirks. Tom Hanks is an employee in the epitome of dystopian office jobs – hundreds of glum employees shuffling to a dark, dank box of a building to do boring, pointless jobs and then shuffle back to their tiny, dank apartments. Hanks is a hypochondriac on top of that, and soon hears from his doctor that he’ll die of a mysterious condition within a few months. Then a mysterious man shows up at his apartment and offers him unlimited funds to enjoy (leading to a great section as Ossie Davis drives him around the town and helps him buy a new wardrobe) and a cruise to the South Pacific, but the catch is at the end of his vacation, he’s got to sacrifice himself to appease the island gods of the volcano.
