There’s no shortage of talent where Greg Mottola’s Keeping Up with the Joneses is
concerned, a would-be comedy romp that never really generates enough laughs, or
rompiness for that matter. This is one
of those films that looks great on paper, surely went into production with the
highest of expectations and inexplicably lays before the audience’s feet like a
lazy dog with an impressive pedigree. This
is a curious result, not simply because of who’s in front of the camera, but
who’s behind it as well as director Greg Mottola has proven in the past (Superbad, Adventureland) to have a
pretty good eye and ear where this whole comedy thing is concerned. However, this time out, his cockeyed approach
is hampered as well by a tin ear.
The movie starts out intriguing enough as we’re introduced
to the Gaffneys, two suburbanites who’ve become so numbed by routine they’ve
forgotten how to live. Jeff (Zach
Galifianakis) is a human resources manager at an aerospace plant who relies a
bit too much on rubber stress balls to solve everyone’s problems, while his
wife Karen (Isla Fisher) is a frustrated interior decorator. Having shuffled off the kids for the summer,
these two have the opportunity to reignite the spark that’s faded between them;
unfortunately the rut they’ve fallen into is a bit too steep for them to climb
out of. However, once their new
neighbors move in, Tim and Natalie Jones (Jon Hamm & Gal Gadot), they start
recreating scenes from Rear Window to
get the dirt on this too-good-to-be-true couple.
Well, there is more to the Joneses than their gorgeous
exteriors would suggest, as they’re revealed to be spies who, once Jeff and
Karen find out too much, must use their new friends to complete their current
mission. This premise from screenwriter
Michael LeSieur is somewhat inspired and does contain a few laughs but the tone
of the film is wrong. Mottola approaches
this as if it were a sitcom (the tradition of casting a gorgeous woman as the
wife of a run-of-the-mill Joe is alive and well here in the case of Fisher and
Galifianakis), as one increasingly ridiculous situation trips on the heels of
another. Time isn’t spent on character
development, as the director quickly goes from one scene to the next, hoping
something will eventually stick. Little
of it does. I’m pretty sure using a
laugh track wouldn’t have helped either
To be sure, with the cast assembled there can’t help but be
a glimmer of hope shining throughout, which in a way makes the final product
all the more depressing. One can’t help
but wonder what would have resulted had Galifianakis and Fisher been turned
loose (they’re both accomplished comedians), Gadot been given something more to
do than just look gorgeous and Hamm allowed a bit of rope to display the sort
of self-deprecating humor we’ve only seen in flashes in Bridesmaids and Saturday
Night Live.
Unfortunately, Mottola sticks to the script and favors
expediency over inspiration. The film’s third act is filled with the sort of extended car
chases and action scenes viewers should come to expect with a sense of dread by
now, while the revelation of the criminal mastermind behind all these
shenanigans, which should have paid off in comic gold, falls flat. In the end, Jones fails in its mission and the result is a movie of missed
opportunities.
This article appears in Oct 20-26, 2016.
