Spy comedy fails to hit all the targets in its sights
Tim and Natalie Jones (Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot) have it all: worldly sophistication, expensive wardrobes and legs for days. Next door, Jeff (Zach Galifianakis) and Karen (Isla Fisher) Gaffney are the squares trying to “keep up” in this Neighbors-meets-Spy comedy. They’ve just dropped the kids off at summer camp and find themselves twiddling their thumbs instead of being intimate.
Their boredom eventually leads to Karen’s spying on the Joneses. She sees past their dream lives — Tim’s travel writing and multiple languages, Natalie’s exquisite Instagrams and charity work — and questions why such impeccable specimens of the human race would live in a humble suburb.
As it turns out, the Joneses are undercover agents investigating an illegal trade at a top-secret aerospace company, where Jeff works as an HR manager. He naturally dismisses Karen’s suspicions, excited that someone as cool as Tim wants to be his friend,
When Karen reveals the Joneses’ secret identities, the Gaffneys are roped into their dangerous investigation: They dodge sniper lasers, try to buckle their seatbelts during car-chase shootouts, mediate torture interrogations and witness exploding houses.
In other words, they have the time of their lives, even as they play decoys when the Joneses rig a fake trade with “Scorpion,” the big bad guy who’s played by a surprise cameo best kept a secret — it’s a brilliant piece of commentary on the film’s theme of perfection versus mediocrity.
Fisher and Galifianakis are clearly modelled after Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen in Neighbors, but while that movie allows room for over-the-top reactions from its norms, here the director and screenwriter rely on the talents of Fisher and Galifianakis to transcend what’s on the page.
Occasionally, the actors pull it off, but otherwise the Gaffneys are a little too dull.
It’s easier to write mysterious, cypher-like characters, which is why Hamm and Gadot seem so believably unbelievable.
And yet it’s easy to watch Keeping Up With the Joneses because the humour is mostly consistent. While it aims for easy laughs and thrills, it tries to hit too many targets at once. It simply can’t keep up with the comedies it so clearly tries to imitate.