I spy boring ‘Joneses’
A suburban couple gets to know more about their new neighbours in ‘Keeping Up with the Joneses’.
ZACH GALIFIANAKIS can’t seem to catch a break these days. I haven’t seen Masterminds myself, but from what I’m hearing, it’s not much better than the movie this review is focused on, Keeping Up with the Joneses. Both feature Zach playing everyday characters who get thrust into a life of dangerous adventure. This is the one where he discovers that his neighbours are spies and helps them out with their spying.
If you’re thinking ‘Why would spies need Zach’s help? He’s really not equipped for that kind of job’, you would be right – and the movie doesn’t seem to care. Many times, I was burdened by questions like that, only for the movie to slap me across the face, punishing me for daring to take it so seriously. Silly me. Which, granted, is fair. It’s a comedy with a wacky premise. It doesn’t exactly have to be grounded in realism if it’s funny. But it’s not funny. In fact, it’s really dull. The main base of the humour is comparing the ho-hum life of soccer moms and dads to the devilishly accomplished and attractive couple of Gal Gadot and Jon Hamm as the Joneses’ new neighbours who move in to spy on Galifianakis and his fellow co-workers.
Those jokes get old very fast.
POOR ON A WHOLE
So it’s not very believable and it’s not very funny. Are the characters any good? Well, actually, that’s probably the only thing the movie has going for it. There’s a sense of who each character is and the cast does it’s best to bring that out. It’s just when the situations they are in feel so illogical and unfunny, it doesn’t really matter.
All in all, this movie is just sort of nothing. It’s not going to make you angry that it exists, but it’s not gonna make you happy either. It simply occupies space and time, but leaves no real effect on you. A month from now, I’ll remember it as that movie that came out a couple years ago.
That’s how distant it’ll be in my mind.
Rating: Read A Book. Mermans