What a clever premise. In The Joneses, David Duchovny and Demi Moore play the “father” and “mother” of a “perfect family,” an upscale clan which always has the best of everything: the coolest new cars, the most stylish clothes, the niftiest consumer electronics.
They’re plants. No, not plant people like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, though that would be pretty cool. It’s just that they aren’t really married. Their kids aren’t really their kids. And they don’t really own any of their cool stuff. They’re stealth marketers, living in a house their company leases and using their good looks, charisma, and subtle salesmanship to become the tastemakers whom the tastemakers follow. They track their effectiveness in local sales rates of luxury goods, and they compete amongst themselves to put up the best numbers in their demographics. The locals? Well, maybe they can afford to keep up, and maybe they can’t. That’s not the Joneses problem.
Thus does the film (directed and co-written by former ad man Derrick Borte) skewer our consumer and credit culture with bite and wit, reflecting on how much we define ourselves by our stuff and how much we define ourselves by how our stuff stacks up against the neighbors’ stuff. And I’ve gotta tell ya, it worked. I wanted The Joneses’ house. I wanted their cars. I wanted their clothes and their gadgets and all the rest, even as I knew I was watching a film about how artificial those wants can be. And when things started going wrong, as the laws of drama dictate they must, I wanted The Joneses to pull through. Not only did they sell me on their stuff, they sold me on themselves.
The Joneses worked as satire and as drama, and it made me think about my buying habits and the impulses that drive me to purchase some gadget before I pay off my cars. The Joneses was sharp and could be unkind, but I learned from its insights and recommend it to you. This is a good film.
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