My problem is that Joe is such a nebbish at the beginning that I simply couldn’t buy his having been a firefighter.
Given the year in which this movie was filmed, and the fact that Joe’s firefighting career was supposed to be 8 years before the events in the movie, and where Tom Hanks was in his career when this movie was made –
Joe was obviously a firefighter back when he dressed up in drag to live in a women-only apartment. 
Thanks tracer, I just woke the baby I laughed so loud
The firefighter thing I liked. The screenwriter John Patrick Shanley’s earlier works – Five Corners, Moonstruck, and one other he distances himself from – all have the sense of being sequels to some other fascinating story. For example, in Moonstruck, Nicholas Cage’s character is missing his hand when you first meet him. He tells his long story about how that happened, and it comes up again maybe only once over the course of the entire movie. But the story of how he lost it drives his character. Same with Cher; her husband’s death happened long before the start of the movie, but it’s all she ever thinks about.
Five Corners is even more like that.
So in JvTV, you have Joe who was a firefighter before he became a hypochondriac. You have Patricia who sold her soul to her father for the sake of a boat, sacrificing her only taste of freedom for her only chance at knowing what it feels to be free. It’s really not as involved as the characters in Moonstruck, but it’s something I’ve come to appreciate about Shanley’s writing: the story you see in the movie is just a small taste of what the characters have ever been through.
And what really sums up this movie is something Joe says to Angelica in the car: “If you have a choice between killing yourself and doing something you’re afraid of doing, why not do the thing you’re afraid of doing?” Angelica can’t even handle hearing that. But for Joe, the thing he was afraid of doing was being a hero, just like he was back in his firefighting days. That’s the whole point of the volcano - Joe has the choice of either just dying alone in Staten Island, or he can jump back into the fire.
I hate hate hate it. Now, part of that could be because it was absolutely adored by this incredibly pretentious jerk that I disliked. But I’ve always kind of referred to it as “Brazil for Dummies”.
Here it is. Tain’t cheap, though.
I’ve only seen the film once, but I found it tedious, alternating between self-indulgent quirkiness and fortune-cookie philosophizing. Some funny moments, but far too many “precous” ones. No way is it over-rated (except, obviously, by some passionate admirers).