KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES DVD (2016)

SYNOPSIS: An ordinary suburban couple (Zach Galifianakis, Isla Fisher) finds it’s not easy keeping up with the Joneses (Jon Hamm, Gal Gadot) – their impossibly gorgeous and ultra-sophisticated new neighbors – especially when they discover that Mr. and Mrs. “Jones” are covert operatives.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Done in the vein of Mr and Mrs Smith and True Lies, Keeping With The Joneses recycled some of the ideas from its more famous predecessors but instead of making it funnier and smarter, it never lives up to its potential and ends up being overly average.

The cast boasts names liked Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), Jon Hamm (Mad Men), Isla Fisher (Now You See Me) and soon-to-be a household name, Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman). Likely one of the main reasons why this title should garner some attention on streaming sites and inflight entertainment.

Galifianakis and Fisher play Jeff and Karen Gaffney who lived in a normal quiet suburban. Their lives are routine and boring until a pair of gorgeous couple, the Joneses (Hamm and Gadot) moved in next door. The Gaffneys find the Joneses intriguing and shortly after, Karen notices there is something strange about the two of them. It turned out the Joneses are secret agents and someone from Jeff’s company is secretly selling microchips to an arms dealer.

The synopsis on the surface offers a seemingly exciting time ahead. Unfortunately the script by Michael LeSieur (You, Me and Dupree) hardly offers any chuckles despite the promised premise. It’s not much of a comedy unless you count Jeff dragging his unconscious wife out of their neighbor house as funny. There’s hardly anything sexually intriguing unless you are talking about a scene, which has Gal Gadot, dressed in sexy black lingerie. If you are looking for some exhilarating action, there is a somewhat loud explosion (repeated twice) and a serviceable car chase sequence snugged inbetween.

Galifianakis, Hamm and Fisher are pretty much-accomplished performers but there’s nothing here that is worthy of their time and talents. A late appearance by Patton Oswalt is also wasted as well. Johnny Depp does it way better in 21 Jump Street.  

It’s a shame given the movie is directed by Greg Mottola who gave us Superbad and Paul. The pacing is lackluster and a message about maintaining a good marriage sounds entirely out-of-place and incoherent. We were expecting lots of fun and outrageous action at least it’s an entertaining spoof on the spy genre but we are so so wrong. 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Spy Game is an 11 minutes making of segment which features the cast and crew giving their thoughts on the movie. Keeping Up With Georgia talks about the location shooting and there’s 18 minutes of Deleted Scenes which mostly seesGalifianakis improvising. A Stills Gallery and Trailer round up the extras. 

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The audio track is fantastic that it shows the same house being blow up twice so you won’t miss the boom. Colour reproduction and imaging detailing is pretty sharp for a DVD.  

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee