'Volunteers' at 35: Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson's memorable romance began with this forgettable '80s comedy

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/volunteers-35-tom-hanks-rita-wilson-memorable-romance-forgettable-80s-comedy-141858339.html

Released during the dog days of 1985’s summer movie season, the high-concept studio comedy, Volunteers, isn’t remembered all that fondly... if it’s remembered at all. Helmed by Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan director, Nicholas Meyer, and worked over by a trio of screenwriters, the movie is about the ne’er-do-well son of a wealthy American family who skips town to avoid violent debt collectors. Joining the Peace Corps, he flies to Thailand and gets mixed up in a nonsensical plot that pits the residents of a rural village against a small communist army.

Premiering in theaters 35 years ago this week, Volunteers received mixed-to-negative reviews and grossed less than $20 million — ahead of now-cult favorites like Ladyhawke and Starman, but well behind the year’s biggest comedy hits, including Fletch and Back to the Future. Seen today, the cringe-inducing Asian stereotypes and lead-balloon humor make it clear why the movie has resided in semi-obscurity since its August 16, 1985 release.

Even though Volunteers wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of a lost classic, it did mark the beginning of a classic Hollywood romance, as the movie’s stars, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, lived out their onscreen romance in real life. Three years after the film’s release, the couple got married and have been the textbook definition of #RelationshipGoals ever since, supporting each other through career choices, child-rearing and, most recently, the coronavirus pandemic.

Hanks and Wilson were the first celebrities to disclose that they had tested positive for COVID-19, and provided regular updates on their recovery. In April, they said that they donated their blood to aid with medical research as attempts to develop a vaccine continue. Accepting his Cecil B. DeMille Award at this year’s Golden Globes, Hanks tearfully described Wilson as, “A wife who is fantastic in every way, who has taught me what love is.” And on their 32nd anniversary this past spring, Wilson posted a tribute to Hanks on Instagram, writing “32 years with this guy! Happy Anniversary, my love. Let’s got 32 more and then some!”

Funnily enough, Hanks’s character in Volunteers isn’t a guy you’d want to be with for one year, let alone 32. Along with Uncle Ned on Family Ties, Sherman McCoy in The Bonfire of the Vanities and Professor G.H. Door in The Ladykillers, Lawerence Bourne III is one of the rare heels in Hanks’s nice guy-dominated filmography. Back in 1985, Hanks was coming off a box-office hot streak that included Splash and Bachelor Party and embraced the chance to be a jerk, adopting a faux-aristocratic accent and regarding everyone around him as a docile servant to his whims. That includes Wilson’s Beth Wexler, an idealistic Peace Corps volunteer who Lawrence would very much like to seduce and abandon like all of his past romantic conquests.

In their first scene together — which takes place on the long plane ride from New York to Thailand — Hanks plops himself down next to Wilson as she’s waking up from a mid-flight nap. “Good morning, darling,” Lawrence says, passing himself off as his friend, Kent Sutcliffe (Xander Berkeley), who he replaced on the Peace Corps roll call. “I gotta tell you: you’re completely different from the way I pictured you,” Beth tells “Kent,” whose name and biographical details she remembers from the list of people she’ll be stationed with in Thailand. “I just sort of pictured this sweet-natured doofus.” Cut to 10 hours later as the plane is descending, and Lawrence drops the “sweet-natured doofus” facade to reveal his real intentions. “You mean, you’ve just been trying to go to bed with me?” Beth says, shocked. “Well, I think I’ve put in the hours, don’t you?” Lawrence replies, before propositioning the airline stewardess instead.

That inauspicious beginning is followed by other less-than-romantic moments. Once stationed at their remote Thai village, Lawrence immediately demonstrates his lack of interest in community service, and rolls his eyes at his fellow volunteers, from Beth — who he describes as a “sexually repressed, guilt-ridden Jewish maid” — to avuncular Pacific Northwesterner, Tom Tuttle (John Candy, who reliably provides the movie’s few genuine laughs). But as the story continues, he undergoes a modest change of heart, helping the village stand up to a local drug lord, as well as communist forces, and courting Beth with old-fashioned romantic gestures including a candlelit dinner and a cold bottle of Coke. (That scene was frequently called out in reviews for its in-your-face product placement.) By the time the credits roll, they’re a committed couple and ready to embark on an all-new adventure… opening an anything-goes casino in the middle of the Thai jungle.