Comedies are a favorite genre of mine, and although they are meant to be light, funny and entertaining in order to allow us to escape into a fun space for a couple of hours, there are times, many in recent years, that comedies don't live up to the ingredients in which makes this genre as funny as it should. Case in point is this next offing titled "Keeping Up with the Joneses", whereas the premise was actually funnier than the actual execution of the script.
An ordinary suburban couple, Jeff Gaffney (Zach Galifianakis) and Karen Gaffney (Isla Fisher) discover that their hospitable new neighbors, Tim Jones (Jon Hamm) and Natalie Jones (Gal Gadot) are actually government spies. As part of their mission, the Joneses' must find information from both of their neighbors in a way that they're subtle, but am able to extract the info they need which finds the Joneses rather frustrated. After sneaking into the Joneses' house while they're out, the Gaffney's come to learn that these people are up too no good so they have to be specifically careful around them. However soon, all four of them are caught up in an international espionage imbroglio.
Others to round out the cast are Patton Oswalt as Scorpion, Matt Walsh as Dan Craverston, Maribeth Monroe as Meg Craverston, wife of Dan, Ming Zhao as Scorpion's girlfriend, Michael Liu as Yang and Kevin Dunn as Carl Pronger, a security guard.
This was sufficiently directed by Greg Mottola ("The Daytrippers" '96, "The Big Wide World of Carl Laemke" (TV movie) '03, "Superbad" '07, "Adventureland" '09, "Paul" '11, "Clear History" (TV movie) '13) plus TV. Even though this filmmaker has a fair amount of work to his credit, the characters he projects through his actors, at least in this film, aren't the most memorable as they could be. I think there could've been a bit more opposing character makeups between these two different couple in order to see the true absurdity of what's going on when a certain scene takes place. Trust me, this was much better than I dreamed it could've been, but the characters still needed some spicing up without them being like cartoon characters. It was written by Michael LeSieur ("You, Me and Dupree" '06, "The Maiden Heist" '09) plus TV. The writing could've be a hit and miss here, as with any film, but LeSieur is not a seasoned writer, so it's easy to say that, of course, the writing is not as polished as it could be. But then there are seasoned writers that, at times, are not at the top of their game. This writer has potential--he needs more writing, but maybe with TV for a little while longer--not sure. This writer will be given a reprieve in that he will be penning a new animated feature film of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" slated out in 2018. So we will see. How can one miss with that kind of material?
As I said above, this wasn't a total wash--it was far better than I thought it would be, but when it comes time for Hollywood to produce a comedy with this interesting of premises, it's best to pay a bit more money and get a true, seasoned comedy writer. As the old adage goes, "you get what you pay for".
Out of 4 Stars: 2.5 Rated: PG-13 105mins.
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