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Movie Review: 'Keeping Up with the Joneses'

By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - They're Jeff and Karen Gaffney, an everyday married couple, parents of two kids away at summer camp for the first time, living in a cul-de-sac in a quiet suburban neighborhood in suburban Atlanta.

He works in the human resources department of a defense contractor, she's a "home design consultant."

They're about to be alone together for the first time in a long time.

Oops.

They've also just welcomed new neighbors who have just moved in next door.

They are bloggers Tim and Natalie Jones – he's a travel blogger with a glass-blowing hobby, she's a cooking blogger and a "social media consultant," whatever the heck that is -- and they're attractive, friendly, and sophisticated.

So keeping up with the Joneses may not be easy.

Oops. Oh, one other thing: the Joneses have a secret: they're undercover government agents involved in an international espionage plot and on the trail of what appear to be traitors dealing with Jeff's company.

Double oops.

1½
(1½ stars out of 4)

Keeping Up with the Jones is an action comedy about these two couples and the relationships between the couples and the individuals.

Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher play the Gaffneys, Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot play the Joneses.

The film is amusing in spots, but the premise is too predictably and conventionally handled to keep us from noticing the premise's contempt-breeding familiarity, and much of the slapstick falls flat while much of the action merely and awkwardly falls.

To describe the film as generic is to understate the case.

There's a surface resemblance to The In-Laws, but that film had laughs and smarts to spare. And describing it as a comic variation of television's drama, The Americans, puts it on a pedestal it never earns.

Director Greg Mottola has made four nifty comedies (Superbad, Paul, Adventureland, The Daytrippers), but Keeping Up with the Joneses fails to keep up with his previous outings. It feels stale and tired, with awkwardly handled exposition and long stretches during which the comic edge evaporates, as if this was a persuasive, suspenseful spy thriller.

Mottola gets very little out of his talented but pretty much wasted cast, who are saddled with an unpolished (perhaps literally) screenplay by Michael LeSieur that has a suffocating lack of surprise.

In Mottola's previous comedies, we found laughs where we weren't expecting them. This time out, we wait for laughs that never come and respond to several subplots that never materialize.

For Galifianakis, who dials it down more than he should, and Isla Fisher, whose established comedic chops don't really come into play, this is a wasted opportunity.

As for Hamm and Gadot -- he was Mad Men's Don Draper, she's soon to be Wonder Woman, both are more closely associated with drama than comedy – they do what's asked of them, but they look as though they know they've wandered into the wrong neighborhood.

As comedy-cast showcases go, this is a case of severe underemployment.

So we'll spurn this sputtering spy spoof with 1-1/2 stars out of 4. Will you get tired of Keeping Up with the Joneses? Only if you see it.

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