The Joneses

Odd for a film like THE JONESES to be so transparent and simplistic in its title, which refers to the saying 'keeping up with the Joneses'. So facile a title would not reflect some of the real fun that exists within the film, but such an idiotic title is also reflective on the downfall of the film, which is that its expectations for itself were never set very high. The story, which is, of course, ludicrous, is about a company which sets up fake families of people in rich neighborhoods who are given all the new, hottest stuff to parade about and force sales up. This fake family, consisting of the nymphomaniac Amber Heard as the daughter, David Duchovny as the inexperienced "father", Demi Moore as the weathered and ambitious "mother" and Ben Hollingsworth as the closeted "son". At first, Steve (Duchovny) is doing horrifically in his sales, and for a while the film tracks his struggle and unlikely ascent. Some of the methods the Joneses go through are pretty funny, and the odd humanity the "family" finds resembles that same good, buried movie. How the film fails though, is that it becomes so simplistic as to become stupid. It has a message of how we don't need to be keeping up with the Joneses, and a neighbor even kills himself because he has bought so intensely into their ideology. Steve Jones feels terribly, as if this is his fault, but there is no fault put on the idiots who buy in, and they are here excused. This then humanizes the Joneses, who are really just idiotic hogs who bask in their new shit and whine about how their lives aren't perfect. Such half-notions about 'money doesn't make you happy' and you can't 'keep up with the Joneses' is what makes this such a simplistic drag.
The Joneses: ★1/2