Review: The Volunteers

Directed by: Nicholas Meyer

Written by: Keith F. Critchlow, David Isaacs, Ken Levine

Starring: Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Tim Thomerson, John Candy, Gedde Watanabe, George Plimpton

Rating: [2.5/5]

The act of volunteering whether optional or not has the potential to make a big difference in the lives of those receiving the service. It therefore makes sense why judges at times use it as a method of restitution for those who have committed a crime or in the case of Volunteers utilized as a means to get away from creditors. A comedy with plenty of potential but opts for some uninteresting story points that hope to provide some cheap laughs but just feels like a bit of a waste. 

Freshly graduated from Yale University, spoiled brat Lawrence Bourne (Tom Hanks) has amassed a gambling debt of $28,000 that his father refuses to cover for him. With no other means to pay back what he owes, he decides to find his way onto a plane headed to Thailand with the Peace Corps to avoid his creditors. Now in Thailand, he and his group are tasked with building a bridge for the local population, which comes with its own complications. 

A film like Volunteers has no aspiration to be taken seriously considering its genre as it seeks to deliver a bountiful amount of silliness through its plot and the shenanigans the characters get themselves into. At its maximum potential, this film could operate as a satire on the well-meaning American traveling to another country looking to fix them up before they go back to their first-world life. The film somewhat gives an indication it might take this approach, but it decides to in a wackier and less impactful direction. 

With Lawrence as the lead, we have a character with plenty to learn. He comes from a very sheltered and privileged way of life. For everything he has received the man manages to still not appreciate anything given to him, thus making this trip to Thailand where the idea here is to give to those with less than you an opportunity for him to learn from his ways. In some aspects, the film tries this out, but still only manages to scratch the surface in the effort to provide more broad-based comedy to entertain. By broad-based entertainment, I mean painting all of the individuals of Thailand with a big brush, of course, and making this comedy feel quite stilted as a result. 

The elements that work in Volunteers transpire in small moments throughout the film, particularly whatever in the world John Candy does. He enters the film as Mr. America, which makes the moments where he gets captured and he gets indoctrinated with communist ideas quite comical only further proving John Candy can make everything work, even when the material does not provide the best help. However, with Lawrence serving as the main protagonist of the film we have to go back to him where everything begins to fall apart unfortunately. 

Tom Hanks truly tries his best to make Lawrence a character work but this narrative arc of him trying to understand how to do something correctly followed by all of the shenanigans this character gets involved with just does not hold as much water as the film would like. This film certainly landed in the goofy era of Tom Hanks’s career and it also does not display his best work by any stretch of the imagination. At least you can see him and his future wife hit it off as the main couple where we hope they get together at the end despite no real character work to get us there. Again, not much substance is given to them, but they try their very best to make do with what they receive. 

Violently forgettable in failing to entertain whenever John Candy does not appear on screen, Volunteers does nothing to make one pay it much mind. It rejects the possibility to do something meaningful with its premise about these Americans traveling to a third-world country trying to enact some positive change. Instead, we get this romp where they play into Orientalist stereotypes and use Thailand as a backdrop for these characters to get involved in shenanigans that do not necessarily make for something worth watching. I needed to dig deep to remember much of anything that took place in this film and revisiting it for this review reminded me exactly why.