SummaryLawrence is a rich kid with a bad accent and a large debt. After his father refuses to help him out, Lawrence escapes his angry debtors by jumping on a Peace Corp flight to Southeast Asia, where is assigned to build a bridge for the local villagers with American-As-Apple-Pie WSU Grad Tom Tuttle and the beautiful and down-to earth Beth Wexler. Wha... Read More
Directed By:Nicholas Meyer
Written By:Ken Levine, David Isaacs, Keith Critchlow
Volunteers
Metascore
Mixed or Average
55
User score
Mixed or Average
5.6
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
55
38% Positive
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
63% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
70
Take a healthy helping of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a dollop of The Bridge on the River Kwai, a dash of any Tarzan movie, a soupcon of Casablanca, a whiff of The Wizard of Oz and a stunt or two from a favorite Saturday serial, stir frenetically, and if you're lucky enough to have snappy dialogue by Ken Levine and David Isaacs, you may end up with as funny a movie as Volunteers.
63
A comedy boasting a gimmick worth a peek. For, into this remembrance of time past and youth altruistic, the script injects a heavy dose of up-to-the-minute pragmatism. [16 Aug 1985]
63
Volunteers is for the most part so good-natured and eager to please, or at least to solicit laughs, that it may be forgiven many sins. Many of the jokes simply don't work, but in the style forged by Airplane!, Volunteers keeps them coming. Wait long enough, you'll laugh; wait again, you'll laugh again. [16 Aug 1985, p.D1]
60
Hanks is excellent and has a way with funny lines that marks him as one of the better droll comic actors, if given the right material. Here, writers Ken Levine and David Isaacs have provided the actors with solid jokes.
50
Volunteers is a collection of one-liners, mostly good, wrapped around an undeveloped story, generally dull. Despite its frequent glimmers of intelligence, it's an unsatisfactory comedy that yawns to a close.
50
Volunteers is a very broad and mostly flat comedy [from a story by Keith Critchlow] about hijinx in the Peace Corps, circa 1962. Toplined Tom Hanks gets in a few good zingers as an upperclass snob doing time in Thailand, but promising premise and opening shortly descend into unduly protracted tedium.
50
It's a shame that this often cute script couldn't have better served, and been better served by, its actors.
User score
Mixed or Average
5.6
25% Positive
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
63% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
13% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
Sep 13, 2024
5
Tom Hanks and John Candy lead us on this shallow, silly tour of an unusually volatile Peace Corps mission to Thailand. Both play wacky caricatures - Hanks as a snooty New Hampshire socialite in the wrong place, Candy a helpless simpleton with two left feet - and that extra dash of color ultimately saves the picture from sliding into the deepest dregs. Though the plot revolves around the construction of a massive wooden bridge to benefit the natives, we spend most of the picture watching Hanks's Kennedy wannabe struggle to emerge from his loathsome, self-absorbed shell, largely inspired by the unrequited affections of fellow missionary Rita Wilson. The pair would actually spark a lifelong romance during filming (they're still together today, bucking the Hollywood norm) but their on-set chemistry doesn't translate to anything special on the screen. Lightly humorous in the spirit of an only-okay SNL sketch, Volunteers is inoffensive and flashy but not all that memorable.
