Joe Nobody becomes Joe Somebody after he gives it to the man. It’s Bring Your Daughter to Work Day at a pharmaceutical corporation when an onerous bully bitch-slaps A/V guy Joe (Tim Allen) over a parking space. It’s an especially tragic moment: blood slowly trickles from Joe’s nose as his daughter (entirely too chipper for a child of divorce) watches from her dad’s layman excuse for a car. As staged by director John Pasquin, the scuffle is of the symphonic, existential kind. Joe Nobody may have been afraid of being invisible but Wellness Coordinator Meg Harper (Julie Bowen) unwittingly cares (“What do you want?”) and creates a monster as a result. It’s only a matter of time before Joe begins to play with the big boys (squash matches, Backstreet Boys karaoke outings), oblivious that his daughter is becoming an Afterschool Special. Though he’s an underachieving journeyman, Joe fancies himself a poet (“There’s a big hole in me and it still hurts when the wind blows through”). As far as Everyman sagas go, Joe Somebody is no Joe Versus the Volcano. Joe blows hot air, losing his main squeeze when he decides to fight his bully at a local schoolyard. Sound familiar? Take the 401K plan out of Joe Somebody and he’s still just a kid at heart, gauging success via physical scuffles. Pasquin, though, is seemingly oblivious to the legacy of childishness in his adults. The film is innocent enough, so zany you might forget its cloying moral tag could easily have been dished out by grade-schoolers.
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