The Joneses (2009)

This comedy about consumption (not TB, but acquisitiveness) charmed us. Its story of a beautiful family who get paid to convince their friends and neighbors to buy expensive luxury items, i.e. keep up with the Joneses (David Duchovny and Demi Moore), was decorated with glossy production design, wardrobe, sets, locations (mostly Georgia), and high-tech toys. Both Jack and I love technology, and among the products that the title characters use for enticement are new cell phones, TVs, video games, golf clubs, virtual golf games, and cars, not to mention clothes, jewelry, packaged food, and much more. However, there are no Apple products (our favorites). I suspect that Apple wasn't willing or didn't need to pay the product placement fees that the filmmakers could get from Dell, Audi (who supplied all the cars), and others.

The first two acts are quite funny, as the family improves their sales figures through attraction not promotion, and then the movie turns into a cautionary tale. Duchovny (I didn't see the X-Files TV series, only the 2008 movie, but I loved him as the co-star of The Rapture (1991), the star of the wonderfully sick and twisted Showtime series Californication (season 4 coming soon), and guest actor on three episodes of the HBO series The Larry Sanders Show (1995-98)) and Moore (some of my faves are About Last Night...(1986), Disclosure (1994), plus her work in the ensembles of Bobby (2006), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and If These Walls Could Talk on HBO in 1996, which she co-produced; young Amy loved Now and Then in 1995; and I must mention Moore's 3 wins and 4 nominations for Razzies - the Golden Raspberry Awards) do great jobs in their characters with double lives. Their kids, played by Amber Heard (one episode of Californication, a cameo in Zombieland (here's a photo), and others) and Ben Hollingsworth turn in good performances, but the standouts are Gary Cole (I remember him in In the Line of Fire (1993) and Office Space (1999), and he's done lots of TV, notably Entourage as desperate agent Andrew Klein, Desperate Housewives as a creepy ex, The West Wing as VP Bob Russell) and Glenne Headly (I liked her in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), Dick Tracy (1990), 2 Days in the Valley (1996), and four episodes of Monk, among others) as their tightly wrapped neighbors. Former supermodel and Playboy bunny Lauren Hutton (now in her 60s) plays the cutthroat boss of the marketing company that employs the Joneses.

Commercial director and graphic designer Derrick Borte, who wrote the screenplay based on a story by Randy Dinzler, makes his feature directorial debut. We had not seen the preview before reading that this was opening locally April 16. It was the online description that drove us to see it. And now I'm glad I didn't know all that stuff first. Watch the trailer at your own risk. If the movie's gone by the time you get around to it, DVD would be perfectly fine, so just save it to your netflix queue. Imdb lists several movies by this title, and there's a different one with a 2010 date. It apparently hasn't been released yet. This one has the 2009 release date because it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last September.

Jack reminded me to mention the similarities to the series The Riches (starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver), which was about a family who assumes the life of people they find dead in a car accident. It was cancelled by FX after two brilliant seasons. Put season 1 on your netflix list while you're at it.