Last Saturday, I was bored and frustrated after spending the early
afternoon plowing through some difficult reading for school, and I was
looking for any excuse I could find to get away from my homework. So Dad
proposed that I accompany my brother and his friend to the dollar
theater for a fun diversion. The viewing choices were limited, and Joe Somebody
was the only film with a PG rating. None of us knew much about it, but
we figured that we would be pretty safe with a Tim Allen movie. And for a
buck, it would be no huge sacrifice if the movie didn't turn out to be
that great. So at least we went in without high expectations.
In the film, Tim Allen portrays Joe Scheffer, a video designer at a
pharmaceutical company. Some of the biggest ripples of audience laughter
throughout the film occurred when the narrator on his commercials
recited a seemingly endless list of possible side effects. This
exaggeration was rather amusing the first time, but repeating it was
unnecessary and increased the impression that this movie didn't have
much to go on. Most of its comedic moments depended on one of two gags: a
ridiculously long recitation of side effects or some painful injury to
the family jewels. The latter caused our neighbor to nearly collapse
laughing, but my brother and I found it only mildly funny the first time
and increasingly obnoxious the next several times.
But back
to the story. Scheffer is a nobody, a guy whose contributions are never
noticed. He's been skipped over for a promotion, he just got divorced,
and he doesn't have any friends. In fact, nobody seems to care about him
at all except for his daughter Natalie (Hayden Panattiere). So it's "Poor, poor, Joseph, whatcha gonna do, things look bad for you, hey,
whatcha gonna do?" at this point. Joe's life takes a bit of an upward
turn when he meets Meg (Julie Bowen), the company counselor who seems to
be rather taken with him. But it slides right down to rock bottom again
when he gets beaten up in the parking lot by Mark McKinney (Patrick
Warburton) in the parking lot in front of his daughter on Take Your
Daughter to Work Day.
Utterly humiliated, Joe locks himself in
his house and immerses himself in housework. But he cannot escape his
job forever. Meg comes knocking on his door after he has been absent for
several days and convinces him to come back to work. Inadvertently, she
also inspires him to challenge Mark to a rematch when he returns to
work after his suspension. In no time at all, everyone in the office
gets wind of the upcoming fight, and suddenly Joe is everyone's best
friend. He gets to play squash in the exclusive company club, he gets a
promotion even bigger than the one he was hoping for, he gets his own
parking space, and he even gets to hobnob with Governor Ventura at the
Minnesota Timberwolves game.
Life is good for Joe. All he
needs now is the skill to beat Mark, and for that he enlists the aid of
washed-up action film star Chuck Scarett (Jim Belushi), who uses
unconventional methods to teach Joe what he needs to know. Both Meg and
Natalie disapprove of Joe's decision to fight Mark, and despite his
newfound popularity, Joe faces animosity from Jeremy (Greg Germann), a
prissy exec with the hots for Meg. Before the film comes to a close, Joe
will have to sort out what really matters to him and decide who his
real friends are.
Nothing in this movie is very well
developed. Natalie, who could have been a vital character, virtually
disappears for the middle of the film. Callie (Kelly Lynch), Joe's
eclectic ex-wife, confesses towards the end of the film that she is
lonely and misses Joe terribly. And that's it. Apparently her renewed
attraction to Joe stems from his new personality, but we can't be too
sure. She never follows up on her feelings, and I'm inclined to wonder
why they bothered sticking that scene in the movie. Similarly, Joe
complains loudly about Callie's public displays of affection with her
boyfriend, but he shows no qualms about kissing Meg while he is sitting
right next to Callie at his daughter's school play. And no one else
seems to care, either. Stupid.
Basically, I thought this was a
very poorly done movie. I'm not sorry I went to see it. It was still
fun. But I'm very glad I didn't see it for full price. The low-grade
humor, the inane soundtrack (same seven notes played over and over and
over...), the underdevelopment, the corniness... Somebody tell me why
Tim Allen agreed to be in it.
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