I Danced with a Gal with a Hole in Her Stocking

Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)
directed by John Patrick Shanley
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Bert, to Ernie: "Liver pills? We need posters of beautiful places, romantic places. Places George wants to go!"

Waponi Chief: "We are the children of children and we live as we are shown."

I have always imagined that John Patrick Shanley - who loves the full moon so much that he filled the sky with it, and then raised it again for his directorial debut - likes the little sketch that Mary Bailey draws for George, her husband-to-be. Joe is a kind of lunatic Jim Stewart, and the trunks Joe buys from a luggage salesman are the totems of George Bailey's dream life. Once opened, they take George away from Bedford Falls and onto the great wide sea of adventure.

Stanley asked Georges Delerue, who wrote the music for Jules and Jim, to score Joe Versus the Volcano. That, I think, is the clue to the recurring joke about Meg Ryan - in her three roles as DeDe, Angelica, and Patricia - "reminding" Joe of someone. We remember every face we've seen and been close to, and always we remember them best in the countenances of people we love.

It's all cyclical, and one of the reasons I like Lindsay Lohan is that I can see her saying Patricia's lines on Joe's first night aboard the Tweedle Dee. Someone just has to write them for her!