The Bearded Trio

On this day, March 9 th 1990, twenty-five years ago, Joe versus the Volcano , the third collaboration between Tom Hanks and a member of the Spielberg family went on wide release in the US. Expectations were rather high, especially since the former two films (Richard Benjamin's The Money Pit and Penny Marshall's Big ) were box-office hits as well. Following in the footsteps of Shelly Long and Elizabeth Perkins, the leading ladies in the aforementioned The Money Pit and Big , was Meg Ryan, who had just had a huge world-wide hit with When Harry Met Sally . However, Joe Versus the Volcano failed to meet with the high expectations. Box-office results for Joe stopped just short of $40 million (not much compared to the $93 million that When Harry Met Sally or the $116 million that Big grossed). The premise of Joe versus the Volcano wasn't very uplifting to begin with, so maybe that had something to do with the final results... Jo...