Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
David Duchovny
Demi Moore
Ben Hollingsworth
Directed By:
Derrick Borte
The first thing I heard when I came to work Friday morning was: "Benbenbenbenbenbenbenben". It was an eccentric co-worker of mine walking across the room with robot-like drive to make a suggestion: "Ben you gotta watch this movie I watch last night it's called Keeping Up With The Joneses or Meeting The Joneses. You will love it because it's intellectuallll". Fair enough. As soon as I left work, I went hunting for that movie that flew under my radar with potent stealth skills. It'd been out for a year and it was the first time I heard about it. I took a while to find it also. Three video stores around my apartment had no clue about the movie's existence, I ended up finding it on my cable provider "on demand" service. My curiosity was raised.
First observation, it hired two over-the-hill stars. David "Fox Mulder" Duchovny and Demi "I'm not even close to 50 years old" Moore as Steve and Kate Jones. A fun loving family that moves in a new residential neighborhood with their children Mick (Hollingsworth) and Jenn (Amber Heard). They are nice, popular, seemingly happy, but there's scratch on the portrait: they're not a family. They're a decoy, actors and salespeople hired to do intensive placement product among the population, guerilla style. Their goal is to provoke jealousy and send the local folk into buying sprees by creating what they call "the ripple effect" (selling so hard to individuals that they start selling for you). It's a Drama, so I'm leaving you to wonder where does it go from here. This was a disaster in theaters and I can think of a few hundred companies responsible for that.
Like most Hollywood movies that intend to do good, it's not very subtle. It's smart, but you can resume it in the immortal words of Tyler Durden: "The things you own end up owning you". I'm not going to convince anybody by saying consumerism exists only to distract you from existential dread. The Joneses shines in it's way to explain the vicious circle of high pressure consumerism. The more you buy, the more you have payments to make, the more you're a slave to your job and to credit companies. But the money ends up in the same pockets. The middle class becomes poor and indebted and the rich gets richer.
I always though socialist views had nothing to offer but dry formulas, but The Joneses beg to differ. The storyline of neighbor Larry, arguably the high point of the movie, displays the distress of a credit addict. He has the car, the flat screen, the house, the pool, but he also has the payments and the despair. Of course, the movie spends a lot of time dealing with unbearable clichés like Duchovny and Moore's professional romance or the kid's existential dramas. That's why I say it's not very subtle. There's a kind hearted, truthful message in The Joneses, but it's so well gift-wrapped in Hollywood shining-paper that it's somewhat misleading. It requires an effort, but The Joneses make an important point, no matter how small it is.
SCORE: 81%
