Review of Volunteers (1986) by Raji K — 08 Oct 2016

Tom Hanks, John Candy and Rita Wilson star in the comedy Volunteers. Tom Hanks is Lawrence Bourne III, the son of a rich father and he is quite spoiled. He runs a gambling debt of 28,000 dollars and his father decides not to bail him out this time. To escape a beating, he boards a plane with the peace corp that is headed to Thailand. He is paired up with Tom Tuttle from Tacoma (John Candy) and Beth Wexler (Rita Wilson).

The three are tasked with building a bridge that spans across a river which will allow for steady flow of traffic and supplies. Lawrence is cocky and hating the situation he is and refuses to acknowledge or help the locals. He decides to use his time gambling with the locals and relaxing. Beth and Tom are both eager to help, but there lack of knowledge of Thai is makings things difficult. Luckily named At Toon (Gedde Watanabe), is eager to help them learn Thai and provide translation.

What they soon come to realize is that the creation of the bridge is more likely to help the local drug dealers and criminals. Lawrence seems to almost encourage it as he sees it as a quicker way to get out of Thailand, but when he realizes it will harm Beth and others he starts to come around to do the right thing. Hanks does not seem particularly cast well as the spoiled son. Candy's role is wasted as most of his comedic output seems to be repeatedly mentioning that he is Tom Tuttle from Tacoma. There are moments in the film where more physical comedy or action oriented comedy could have been used given the foreign location, but this was not utilized. Volunteers can be easily missed, even by those who are Candy and Hanks fans.

-10.09.2016.