The Joneses (2009)

 

The Joneses (2009)

 

Critic Stuart McGurk totally nailed it, “’The Joneses’ sounds like a great film, until you have to watch it. That’s when it becomes a distinctly average one.” 

 

It’s a perfect expression of “high concept,” so it would behoove us to actually share the definition (from Wikipedia), “a type of artistic work that can be easily pitched with a succinctly stated premise. It can be contrasted with low concept, which is more concerned with character development and other subtleties that are not as easily summarized.” Therein lies the rub, because everything was said in the poster, and Writer/Director Derrick Borte clearly struggled to squeeze even one additional idea out of the story after he stated the first idea quite well.

 

Here, the concept is that the old adage, “Keeping up with the Joneses” has been literalized, and, in fact, turned into a conspiracy, as sinister marketing company is peppering the most affluent communities in the USA with fictional families that wear the newest clothes, play with the newest gadgets, and drive the newest cars, in order to create consumer buying frenzies among their jealous neighbors, who are unsuspecting of the manipulation. The title and tag line, “They’re not just living the American dream; they’re selling it,” says it all, and in fewer words than I just did.

 

The phrase, “Keeping up with the Joneses” is universally understood by residents of the USA as (Wiki again) “referring to people's tendency to judge their own social standing according to that of their neighbors.” It goes all the way back to 1913, with a gag-a-day newspaper comic strip by Pop Momand named, well, “Keeping Up with the Joneses.” It concerned the McGinis family who have recently become modestly affluent and struggle to "keep up" with the classier lifestyles of their neighbors, the Joneses. Importantly, this family they are so jealous of never appears, though they are frequently referred to. Much of the humor derives from the McGinis frequently, accidently, revealing they share more culturally with their maid than the other home owners around them, and their desperate pursuit of status symbol items tempting them to live beyond their means. This film displays no evidence of being actually familiar with the comic-strip that influenced it, and this is best evidenced by the strip focusing on the struggling family obsessed with those of apparent greater status, while the film is focused on the objects of desire, not those doing the desiring.

 

This was Borte’s first feature, and his demonstration of slick craft, eye for detail, and solid pacing is undeniable. He also was speaking of what he knew, having done music videos and TV journalism for two years, then being successful at making commercials for another two. He targets the amorality of real-world, paid social influencers and stealth marketers, something we live and breathe with that has an undeniably Orwellian stench; Borte’s worst mistake was not fully embracing the Orwell. This film’s world is one where the consumer culture is the only culture and there is no line between the media landscape and the actual ground we walk upon. This isn’t an SF film, but it should’ve been, SF novels have explored these themes for generations and novelist Frederick Pohl, who had worked in advertising just as Borte did, handled these themes with greater boldness in the mid-20^th c. than Borte could manage in the first decade of the 21^st. His film came out only three years after the first airing of the so-called “reality-TV” show, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” (it ran from 2007 until the last star in the sky twinkled out and went dark), and Borte simply failed to be as outrageous as the TV show, so not nearly outrageous enough to fully express his outrage. 

 

Damn shame too. He secured a solid cast, and this film was grounded by two exceptionally fine performances. The male lead is David Duchony, who has always displayed the skill of conveying and intellectual’s mannerism of both subterrain depth and surface placidness, this made his most famous character, Fox Mulder from “X-Files” (TV series first aired 1993), never wild-eyed even though he was a fanatic, and in numerous other cases, like Mike Klein in “The TV Set” (2006) and Hank Moody in “Califorication” (TV series first aired in 2007), men deeply disappointed with themselves and/or their lot, but never stopping to loudly complain. Here he plays a man we only know by his alias of “Steve Jones,” the figure head, but not actual leader, of a family that doesn’t really exist. As the film progresses, his conscience begins to gnaw at him, but he doesn’t drop his façade, he just gets progressively worse at his deceptive sales-pitch.  

 

Better still is Demi Moore, whose marvelousness here came at the right time, coming off a string of artistic, financial, and personal embarrassments; she likely got paid half of what she would’ve been able to demand only a few years prior. In this film goes only by the fake alias of “Kate Jones,” and is more naturally cold-hearted than Steven, and therefore the stronger of the pair, inspiring to others through intimidation, anticipating her very fine turn as super-capable, conscience-free, corporate leader in “Margin Call” (2011).

 

The fake couple’s equally fake children are Ben Hollingsworth as cool-jock calling himself “Mick” and Amber Heard as a pretty girl referred to as “Jen.”

 

The film is about product placement, so places products. Given the name-brands in play, those placements must have hugely offset the cost of budget, but I have to wonder why Audi and Stella would want to show their stuff off in this context. On the other hand, everything is beautifully shot and composed; it’s a film about commercials, so it looks like a commercial. Cinematographer Yaron Orbach, Production Designer Kristi Zea, Costume Designer Renee Erlich Kalfus and Set Decorator Frank Galline, all do exceptional work here; one could say they expose the conspiracy by executing it even better than the cast. Zea, specifically, has a background in advertising, just like Borte, and made a strong imprint on another film that same year about status-symbol-obsessionism and consumerism, “Confessions of a Shopaholic.”

 

The first 20 minutes are the best, but then the film left itself nowhere to go but predictability. As soon as we see the Joneses are all fake, we know that Mike is hiding an extra secret, and exactly what it is. As soon as we meet Larry Symonds, played by Gary Cole, we know exactly what his fate will be. As soon as it’s demonstrated that Kate doesn’t love Jake, then we know she’ll come to love him, and there will be a happy ending, and exactly how badly that will cheapen the remaining hour-plus of the of the film.

 

The film received mixed, but still generous reviews. The confidence of the hands guiding the project was clearly the reason, but likely only a secondary reason. I say the timing was more important. 2007 saw this nation hit with the worst financial crisis in 75 years, and I think we all understood that it was not only driven by a financial system ripe with unpunished fraud, but that we were at fault to, we bought up the obvious lies that the bill would never come do. In the housing market, McMansions like those in this film were flying off the shelves like hot-cakes, and eventually there was little difference between toxic lending practices and the self-inflicted toxicity of borrowing. When this film was released in 2009, a recovery had begun, but it was painfully sluggish until around 2012. 2009 was our hang-over year, and this film was black coffee.

 

Trailer:

'The Joneses' Trailer HD - YouTube