Joe Somebody

Joe Scheffer’s wife just left him for a younger man. He was recently passed up for a promotion at work, and just as he’s pulling into a parking spot with his daughter on “bring your child to work” day, a bully takes his place. Joe argues with the man, but the man eventually bitch-slaps him in front of his girl and his co-workers. After retiring to his home for a few days and friendlying up to “the drink”, Joe must decide what he wants from his life, and he apparently, wants to…be somebody!

A pretty generic Disney-esque comedy featuring the “safe” comedy of Tim Allen, a nice message about believing in yourself, a handful of chuckles and an overly perfect ending. Is it a bad movie? No, it’s actually a pretty easy watch, but I don’t think you need to spend more than video dollars on it. Rent it for your kids when it comes out on DVD in a few months, or check it out yourself if you’re looking for something that won’t ask your brain for too much participation during the watch. The film is really not much more than a sketch piece run into an hour and a half movie, with the prerequisite precocious child, the a-hole boss and the “comic relief” sidekick in James Belushi. As Allen’s character trains with Belush, we get the obvious “kick in the nuts” jokes, as well as plenty of bitch-slaps, which I seem to enjoy for some reason. In fact, the scene in which Patrick Warburton bitch-slaps Allen in front of his daughter and a bunch of his co-workers is probably the most memorable one in the whole movie.

But the film doesn’t go for the all-out comedy here, it actually tries to slip in some drama every now and then. Does it work? Well, yes and no. At first, it took me aback, because I was expecting the film to be vying for nothing but ze laughs, but I guess someone decided at some point that developing the characters might be a good idea as well. Not that the film succeeds entirely on that front either, I mean, there’s still quite a one-dimensionality to the characters overall, but I liked the way that they resolved the big fight sequence in the end, and I also appreciated who Allen ended up with. The very last scene was however, way over-the-top and joyous for my liking, but I guess it’s X-mas time and studios do need to toss some basic fluff pieces out there as well (in the midst of all that serious Oscar stuff). Overall, I have to say that I really liked the premise of this movie (the everyman fighting back!), appreciated its message, enjoyed Warburton’s performance and it was nice to see Julie Bowen back in the swing of things (she played the “babe” in HAPPY GILMORE and plays the “babe” here as well-I especially liked the way they worked in a shot of her walking around in her undies…nice!). But the bottom line with this movie is that it’s pretty generic, it doesn’t provide for as many laughs as you’d hope and it takes the safe route most of the time. In fact, I’m not sure who the target market is for this flick but I’d say that kids might enjoy this movie more than anyone. Nothing memorable here, folks.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian