Keeping Up with the Joneses

Keeping Up with the Joneses is another one of those movies where ordinary people find themselves dragged into the world of spies and espionage.  The spies this time around are Tim and Natalie Jones, played by Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot.  They're an attractive and beautiful pair posing as a suburban married couple who have just moved next door to the ordinary people, Jeff and Karen Gaffney, played by Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher.  Tim and Natalie lead exciting lives, while Jeff and Karen are boring, and do things like throw barbecues and design bathrooms for homes.  Once you have the grasp of this idea, you understand a good 80% of the movie.

Jeff and Karen are your regular couple stuck in a rut.  Their kids are off at summer camp, and they can't think of anything to spice up their married life.  Their life is their kids, as well as their jobs - Jeff's an H.R. guy at a tech company, while Karen designs homes. Then Tim and Natalie move in next door, and Karen becomes instantly suspicious of them.  They're too pretty, too talented, and too learned in the world to be living in the suburbs, she thinks.  Tim claims to be a travel writer, has had adventures in all corners of the world, and eats and knows about exotic foods.  Natalie claims to be a food blogger, and is involved with a children's charity.  She can also throw lawn darts with deadly precision, which she demonstrates during a party game.  In reality, they're spies for the U.S. government.  They've come to investigate Jeff's company, where someone is supposedly selling hi-tech microchips to an arms dealer.  Naturally, Jeff and Karen will get involved in the investigation, and be forced to take part in car chases and shootouts with their new neighbors.

The talented cast sail their way through scenes that they could probably do in their sleep.  Galifianakis and Fisher are the nice, but boring couple who have settled into their comfortable lives, and have their world turned upside down.  They're sweetly goofy, smile a lot, and end up screaming most of the time when they get in over their heads.  Hamm and Gadot are sleek, beautiful and professional.  They're sexy, stylish and wear designer clothes to local backyard gatherings.  The differences in these two couples provide the set up for the entire second half of the film, when the Gaffneys and the Joneses are forced to work together in order to stay alive.  Will they become genuine friends despite their differences?  I wouldn't dream of spoiling the ending.

Keeping Up with the Joneses is very minor.  It's an idea that might have worked in a half hour TV sitcom, but stretched out to over 100 minutes, it feels kind of overkill.  There's only so much you can do with this concept and these people, and the filmmakers often seem to be grasping at straws.  Even the screenplay seems content to play it safe beginning to end.  It's like one of those scripts you might read in a screenplay class.  It follows a rigid formula, never strays from the course, and never once attempts to throw in an interesting angle.  This approach not only kills the storytelling, but also the humor.  It's afraid to truly cut loose, and so the movie has the feel of an overly safe corporate product that probably sounded good at a pitch meeting, because it was simple to explain.

The film is directed by Greg Mottola, who has done strong work, such as Superbad and Adventureland.  Those were movies that were actually about something, as well as about the people who inhabited their stories.  This time, he's made a studio film that's drained of all life and purpose.  It was made because it had a simple concept.  The stars did it because they were available, and the money was right.  You get the sense that nothing would be any different if the movie was never made.  It exists only to steal some time away from paying customers, and to keep its actors away from more deserving projects.  Nobody needs that, just like nobody needs to watch this movie.

If you really want to experience watching this film, my recommendation is to go onto Youtube, and look up the theatrical trailer.  Now imagine it stretched out to 105 minutes.  You know how some trailers give away the whole movie?  Well, sometimes there's just not a whole lot to give away in the first place.

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