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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
THE JONESES I was excited to see this film, as it seemed it could perfectly capture the zeitgeist and deconstruct the dark heart of consumerism run amok. Its concept appealed to me, but I couldn’t help feeling the shadowy executives within the film would surely have realized this scheme just didn’t add up—long before we, the audience, would also come to the same conclusion. I had in mind films such as Bryan Forbes’s The Stepford Wives (1975), but the surreal quality and the wit of that film is sadly lacking here. This sort of abstraction would have helped the viewer jump over the hurdle of the deeply flawed conceit that underpins the movie—four people are funded (presumably at huge expense) to act as a perfect model family and dropped into a community of McMansions to incite copycat sales of the consumer items they flaunt. In effect, they serve as the most direct product placement imaginable. Quickly we can guess where the film is headed—the fake family gradually becomes more akin to a real one, leading them to question the phoney impersonators they have become. The presumption then, is that the rookie father, Steve (a likable, but one-note David Duchovny), is the seed of humanity infecting this unit with “realness” and that perhaps underneath his facade, Steve longs for the sort of family life he has been assigned to. The inference here is that men are typically honest and real—riling against their controlling, consuming wives. So is this film misguidedly aiming to be the macho counter to the feminist protest at the heart of The Stepford Wives? All the females are icy and unlikeable, especially Amber Heard as the model daughter, Jenn, who seems to have absolutely no redeemable qualities whatsoever. Demi Moore is well cast, though, as Kate, the icy matriarch (a role she plays all too convincingly), who emasculates her employee/husband and will not lie down and be bedded (harking back to Lilith, the first woman before Eve). Less convincing is her jolting emotional turnaround, especially as she and Duchovny have no on-screen chemistry whatsoever. The son, Mick (Ben Hollingsworth), has some heartfelt soul underneath the trappings of consumerism, with the cliché of him smoking pot at one point trotted out for good measure. As Moore’s real-life partner Ashton Kutcher is the ultimate example of self-propelled soulless marketing and branding (for Nikon)—and he looks about the same age as Hollingsworth anyway—it would have been a real coup to have had him play Mick, which would have provided some much-needed frisson. The standout performance is from the reliably effective Gary Cole as Larry, the browbeaten neighbour who is in awe of Steve’s proclaimed libido and arsenal of designer items. Larry is by far the most interesting and intriguing element in the film—with the potential to illicit real pathos had we been allowed to both explore the depth of his character and given less clumsily explicit exposition about his dilemmas. The wholly uninspiring way the film was shot—poorly lit with bad lens/shot choices combined with terrible music and ill-conceived montages—could perhaps be a deliberate move to ape the tackiness of the decor in the model home the made-up family inhabits, in which case The Joneses succeeds in making the rampant and materialistic world it depicts seem very unappealing indeed.
The knowing product placements are confusingly close to
just, well…being actual product placements.
There’s none of the fun of, say, the wonderful moment in Wayne’s
World where Wayne and Garth discuss the perils of selling out while
they are dressed from head to toe in Reebok. There is no bite, nor
humour, to The Joneses, and as the line between satire and the
product placement it purports to critique seems more elusive, I was
certainly left with a bad taste in my mouth.
Oliver Irving
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