Review of The Joneses (2010) by Stephen H — 16 Sep 2010

I thought the first half of The Joneses was pretty cool. I liked the cast (Duchovny, Moore, Cole have by far the biggest roles in the movie, so don't expect a lot of Ben Hollingsworth or Amber Heard) and the idea of a fake family (or cell, as they're called here) being planted into relatively affluent neighborhood to covertly advertise products through their lifestyle was interesting. Especially in today's world, where we're constantly being advertised to in nearly every facet of our lives (including this movie).

Unfortunately, when the lives of The Jones and the people around them who desperately crave their seemingly ideal existence start to unravel, so does the movie. Derrick Borte's script throws every cliche obstacle up on screen that you can think of in an attempt to add emotional drama and a connection between the characters and the audience, and it just didn't work, for me. I didn't feel sympathy for the people I was expected to feel sympathy for, and it all ended up feeling so predictable that it really dragged down the good things the movie did in the initial half.

I still had an overall positive experience with The Joneses, but I wish this could have been an entire good movie, instead of half of one.