Review of Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016) by Mike S — 21 Oct 2016

The statement 'the best bits were in the trailer' really applies with this one. One can't help but compare this to a film like Date Night and it comes up short of that.

The spy plot is very weak, and delivers an ending and a villain that trys to be cool and funny, but its so poorly put together that it simply doesn't work on either level.

The film needed to get by on its humour, but there's only the odd chuckle or giggle, mostly from the trailer material. And the trailer gave away the whole plot, so it took away much of the interest in the plot, especially in the first half of the movie.

Zach Galifianakis, who like Jason Segal, seems to be losing weight when doing these types of movies, is adequate, but there isn't enough material to work with and his character falls half way between his character in The Hangover and Steve Carell in Date Night, but not in a good way.

Isla Fisher gives it a lot of energy, but again, she isn't given enough material to pull off what Tina Fey did in Date Night. I'm not sure Fisher has the comedic timing for this type of role, however, in her defense, her character is poorly written.

Jon Hamm is generally fine in the wooden 'heroic tough guy' there for Galifianakis to get a man crush on, but at times he lacked the charisma needed and I couldn't help but think spending more money (first on developing the script more but then) getting someone like George Clooney for the role.

Gal Gadot showed several things. First, she won't win an Oscar any time soon, but, she is developing her acting and she delivered most of her dialogue quite well and showed some expressiveness to it. Overtime, she will develop well, but she will always have to fight through her accent to deliver certain lines. But one must remember that English is not her first language.

Second, she showed why she works well as Wonder Woman, because she is very good in action. Her army experience really shows through when she has to fire guns. She's certainly not your average supermodel.

I am confident that she will be great in both Wonder Woman and Justice League next year. And she was the primary reason I wanted to see this film.