"We're going to do some damage in this town," David Duchovny merrily declares to his beautiful wife, daughter, and handsome son as their gleaming SUV rolls up behind the big moving truck in the driveway of their new McMansion.
And damage they do - but mostly to themselves - in The Joneses, an overobvious and underwhelming satire about American consumerism run amok. For all its timely allusions to living beyond one's means - to credit card debt, mortgage foreclosures, and financial ruin - writer/director Derrick Borte's film fails to add anything new, or illuminating, to the Great Recession debate.
In The Joneses, Duchovny is Steve, Demi Moore is Kate. They're Mr. and Mrs. Perfect, right down to the little love pecks and matching PJs. But at the end of the day, when the neighbors have gone home and the lights get switched off, Steve and Kate retire to separate bedrooms. Even their teen-model kids are a sham. The Joneses aren't really a family at all. They're a new kind of stealth marketing team, one that blows into an affluent community, sets themselves up as the family that has it all, and compels their neighbors to keep up with the Joneses by buying the same branded foodstuffs and jewelry, fashions and electronics. A town of happy materialists, spending like there's no tomorrow!
