The Joneses
starring David Duchovny, Demi Moore, Amber Heard, Ben Hollingsworth, Gary Cole, Glenne Headly and Lauren Hutton
written and directed by Derrick Boret
Rating: ♦♦◊◊◊
It was okay, but it could have been better. The idea of the movie was quite intriguing. The Jones family is a model American family: two teenage children, a boy and a girl, and successful parents living in affluence in a gated community. What their exact occupations are is vague. Their new neighbors just assume they are investment-wealthy, or something. But the Joneses are a lie. They are not a real family. They are four salespeople put together to form a sales family ‘unit’ whose mission is to model high-end consumer goods to their neighbors in order to induce their neighbors to purchase said goods. Tracking the sales of these high-end goods in the neighborhood where they live is the measure of their success or failure. Their story is a fitting parable of modern American life: greedy consumption is a virtue, and people are no longer individuals or citizens, they are customers and EVERYTHING is for sale.
The Joneses job is to tempt customers by modeling not just the expensive goods but the lifestyle that goes with it. They are successful sales people, which means they are quite charming: attractive to look at; attractive to know. But they are consumption commandos. Beware!
Any movie with David Duchovny in it I expect to see at least a little humor. Comic relief was his great function here, but I think there could have been more of it as a way to show up the ridiculousness of this kind of consumption-driven life.