"Keeping Up With the Joneses" (**)

I had high hopes for this film, after all Greg Mottola directed it. Mottola is the creator behind both "Superbad" and "Adventureland" two of the best coming of age movies of the 21st century. So what went wrong? The idea of "Keeping Up With the Joneses" itself is decent enough, but the execution is atrocious.

Zach Galifianakis, him again, and Isla Fisher play a boring suburban couple, they are the Gaffneys and their mundane life gets shaken up when mysterious new neighbors, The Joneses, played by Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot, move right next door and drag them into the kind of James Bond-inspired plot that would have Flemming rolling in his grave. 

As much as I didn't think Doug Liman's Mr. & Mrs. Smith, an obviously comprabale plot to this film, was any kind of special movie, it looks like "Les Règles du Jeu" compared to Mottola's film. "Keeping Up With the Joneses" is duller and less exciting than even the horrid reviews (check out that 13% RT Score) make it out to be. Also, when is Hollywood going to stop typecasting Zach Galfianakis? Michael LeSieur's screenplay seems to have been tailor-made for his brand of idiot comedy.

I get why Mottola wanted to tackle this movie, he wanted to make a commercial film which had themes about relationships, how they work, the ins and outs of marriage etc but to make such a film work you need a good screenplay and "Keeping Up With the Joneses" has a screenplay that is just bad. One look at LeSieur's IMDB page tells us he hasn't written much, but when he has it was "You, Me and Dupree". Remember that film? it shares a lot of the same type of humor "Keeping Up With the Joneses" has and that is clearly not meant as a compliment.