'Joe Somebody' more suited for TV than big screen

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

JOE SOMEBODY (Rated PG-13 for profanity, violence) One Star (Poor) A sad sack decides to stand up to the office bully in this weak, lifeless comedy that barely has enough oomph to pass muster as a TV movie, despite a cast full of TV actors. Starring Tim Allen, Jim Belushi, Julie Bowen. Directed by John Pasquin. Twentieth Century-Fox, 100 mins.

It certainly feels as though it belongs on TV, where standards are low and the demand for programming — any programming — is high. What this film is doing in theaters is anybody's guess.

Tim Allen plays Joe Scheffer, head of video production at a Minneapolis pharmaceutical company. Joe is a nobody in a large way: dumped by his wife, passed over for promotions — a meek, unhappy man. The topper comes on Take Your Daughter to Work Day when, in front of his daughter, the office bully (Patrick Warburton of "Seinfeld" and "The Tick") slaps Joe around in an argument over a parking place.

Humiliated, Joe stays home from work, his manhood so compromised that he's not even thinking about a lawsuit (though his superiors fear he will). But a thoughtful human resources worker, Meg (Julie Bowen of "Ed"), snaps him out of his funk by asking a simple question: What do you want?

After much consideration Joe decides he wants a rematch with the bully (who, in this era of sensitivity about workplace violence, has been suspended for a month). So he issues the challenge — and almost instantly finds that everyone at work is looking at him with newfound respect.

Yes, kids, you too can be cool by standing up to a bully. In short order, Joe is invited to play squash with the executives, given a raise and a promotion — and gifted with company courtside seats to the Minnesota Timberwolves (cue the cameo by Minnesota's Gov. Jesse Ventura). Even his ex-wife looks at him in a new way.

But, in becoming popular, Joe loses track of what made him Joe, as he discovers when Meg tells him as much. Can he reconnect with the real Joe in time to learn the movie's other lesson: violence is never the answer?

Allen walks through the film with a hangdog look and is given none of the funny lines — not that there are very many to go around. Perhaps it would seem funnier if there was a laugh track, like on TV. Allen gets bland support from Bowen. And even Greg Germann ("Ally McBeal") and Warburton are unable to do anything with the limp dialog. The only one who rises above the muck is Jim Belushi, as a has-been martial arts star who teaches Joe self-defense.

Indeed, he has more chemistry with Allen than Bowen does, in this fizzle of a comedy.

Rated PG-13 for profanity, violence.