The Joneses

"Can you keep up," asks the oh-so-witty tag line for newbie director Derrick Borte's The Joneses, a supposed comedy starring Demi Moore and David Duchovny as the epitome of the old saying about besting one's neighbours. Working for a multinational corporation, Moore and Duchovny (the Joneses) are employed to subtlety push high-end wares on neighbours without utilizing typical advertising means. Instead, these company placements are set up in wealthy neighbourhoods to show off goods, creating a vortex of envy, capitalism and financial drain. Keeping up with the Joneses, as it were, until the inevitable moment of realization about what exactly the Joneses are up to. Sadly, the real question is: can you keep your lunch down while this turkey unfolds? From forgettable acting — Duchovny's typically monotone male and Moore's bitchy female leads are nothing new for either — to an obvious and flawed script rife with a morals we don't want thrown at us through such plastic people, there's nothing here to give the soap-boxing about greed any legs to stand on. The jokes aren't funny; the characters only spawn hatred thanks to their superficial auras; and even the DVD picture looks grainy — like something lifted from a VCR, not the high-quality picture/sound from the technology of, oh, the '90s. Furthermore, the DVD extras are almost thinner than the flick's plot. An interview with Duchovny's character as he applies for the job is stupid, the unscripted gag during shooting is blatant and not worthy of multiple viewings, while a follow-up on Duchovny's character after quitting the whole sham isn't of value when we didn't care about him to begin with. Nice try, Borte, but most of us don't need to keep up with these Joneses. Instead, we'd rather avoid them entirely.