Review

Review Date: 25-April-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

The Joneses (2010)

With The Joneses, fledgling filmmaker Derrick Borte crafts a love story/satire/social commentary that invites affection, pity, and disgust in almost equal doses. Fortunately, affection gains the upper hand, which allows you to enjoy the movie even as it makes you squirm.

The affection stems from Demi Moore and David Duchovny, a well cast pair of stars who manage to be likable despite the moral degeneracy of their characters. They play Kate and Steve Jones, beautiful people with a McMansion, sports cars, the trendiest fashions, the latest technology, and two bright and popular teenagers. They are effortlessly suave, relentlessly friendly, and sweetly unabashed about their great sex life. Everybody in their gated community admires them as soon as they arrive. More importantly, everybody emulates them, and that is how they make their living.

Yes, the Joneses are frauds, an unrelated team of undercover salespeople tasked with marketing the accoutrements of the American dream. Putting themselves in the upscale public's eye, they flaunt their perfection and drop brand names with pinpoint precision. Kate's party is a success because of certain frozen hors d'oeuvres; Steve's golf swing is superb because of such and such new club. They resemble that horrible wife from The Truman Show, injecting advertising into any situation, only they are much more subtle and intent on keeping the wool over an entire neighborhood's eyes.

While obviously lampooning consumerism (although the setup is plausible), The Joneses illustrates how ambition is sometimes trumped by more natural aspects of human nature. The two kids (Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth) get caught up in hormonal pursuits that do not promote and in fact endanger their scheme. The narrative would be tighter with only one junior trickster (there is not enough time for both so they are sketchy), but then that would represent a flaw in the Jones family as both icons and infiltrators of major market segments. Steve is more central to the tale and he too feels the pull of a real self. He is smitten with his pretend wife, and the attraction becomes mutual as they weather the ups and downs of the business. Kate is driven and therefore reluctant to fall in love, but her softer side continually peeks through. Steve also forms an attachment to his neighbor (Gary Cole), a confused man who, after studying the Joneses, decides that spending lots of money will win back his wife (Glenne Headly). Based as they are on lucre and lies, the plans of these characters do not turn out as hoped.

Towards the end Steve tries to woo Kate by assuring her that she deserves to be happy and loved. It's an arguable point, especially since the darker consequences of their line of work have been revealed. Yet he is convincing in his earnestness, now come to the fore, and it's hard not to share his desire for Kate to yield to impulses unconnected with profit margins and dollar signs. Whether obsessed with pushing or possessing — America's true pastimes, baseball be damned — people still need things that money can't buy.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.