Joe Somebody Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)December 20th, 2001
Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
© Copyright 2001 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.
I can't remember who, but one of Audrey Tautou's co-workers in Amélie really disliked seeing adults humiliated in front of their kids. She would really hate Joe Somebody, a new film that shows the transformation of a downtrodden corporate drone into a confident, sharply dressed player after he is slapped around like a two-dollar whore while his terrified daughter looks on. And she wouldn't just hate the slapping part, either. She'd hate the whole thing, and unless your brain is the size of an acorn, you will, too.
Tim Allen (Galaxy Quest) plays Joe Scheffer, a video communications specialist at a big Minneapolis pharmaceutical company. Joe is recently divorced, and his ex-wife Callie (Kelly Lynch, Charlie's Angels) is practically balling some hunky actor-wannabe (Ken Marino, Dawson's Creek) right in front of him every time he picks up his annoyingly precocious daughter Natalie (Hayden Panettiere, Remember the Titans), who is, at least initially, sexually ambiguous. Joe's work life isn't much better. Most co-workers don't know his name, and he's been passed over for a promotion that had been all but promised to him. In other words, he's a colorized version of Ed Crane from The Man Who Wasn't There.
The slapping incident takes place in the company parking lot on Take Your Daughter To Work Day, where office bully Mark McKinney (Patrick Warburton, The Dish) takes Joe's parking space, as well as his dignity. After wallowing at home in his own filth for three days, Joe is lured back to work by the company's corporate wellness coordinator (read: propaganda specialist), Meg Harper (Julie Bowen, TV's Ed). But instead of remaining a docile underling, Joe decides to challenge the bully to a rematch in three weeks' time. The proposed fight turns Joe into somewhat of a hero, and before you know it, he's got new clothes, car, hair and glasses, and is drawing the attention of the bigwigs who used to ignore him.
The rest of Somebody depicts Joe taking self-defense lessons from a washed-up action star (James Belushi, Return to Me) and gaining confidence as he is accepted into a new, more popular crowd as Natalie and Meg watch in horror. The conclusion is inevitable, but, thankfully, isn't dragged out (unlike, say, Kate & Leopold). The comedic highlights, which are few and far between, involve a Saturday Night Live-style send-up of the list of pharmaceutical drug side effects in television commercials.
Technically, Somebody is a disaster. George Clinton's score is the worst, most grating music I've heard in a feature film in quite some time. As badly as director John Pasquin shoots and lights each scene (he's directed Allen in Home Improvement, The Santa Clause and Jungle2Jungle), he does have the presence of mind to show Bowen in her bra and panties, which is a big but pleasant surprise in a PG movie full of non-offensive slurs like "big jerk," "dirt bag" and - heavens to Betsy - "ass wipe." Worse yet is John Scott Shepherd's script (his first), which contains the year's cheesiest line, delivered to romance-seeking Meg from the reluctant Joe: "My ex-wife put a pretty big hole in me. It still burns when the wind blows through it."
1:42 - PG for language, thematic elements and some mild violence
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
