आलोचक समीक्षाएं

The Joneses manages a deft blend of the sexy, the sad and the silly. And Borte doles out his secrets and surprises in ways that make it easy to keep up with these Joneses.

Except for slipping on a third-act soapbox, The Joneses is a deft allegory of the greed and coveting that led to the recession. At times, you wonder if something like this scam could really happen, or does.

Solid performances from David Duchovny (in a cleaned-up version of his Californication character), Demi Moore (defying age), Ben Hollingsworth, and Amber Heard can't save the movie when the screenplay goes as limp as a noodle and turns into a long string of clichés.

Borte supports his jewel of a story idea with dead-on casting, stunning images and product placement that's intentionally heavy-handed.

This cautionary tale might be easier to swallow if all that stuff didn't look like it came from a Sky Mall catalog.

What could have been a biting black comedy taking product placement to the logical extreme instead is so obviously predictable that even a savvy cast led by David Duchovny and Demi Moore can't sell it.

If The Joneses were pure farce, which it isn't, Borte could have gotten away with a lot. Likewise, the picture might have succeeded if it were all a bit funnier and a little less mean-spirited about spending, debt and envy.

What plays hard and dark for the film's first half goes squishy and blindingly bright as calamity and then outright tragedy lead to the saw-it-coming resolution writer-director Derrick Borte thinks is more sincere than it actually plays.

Either this is a tragic family or a satirical one, and the film seems uncertain which way to jump.

The spot-on cast almost holds the movie together, but whatever potential this timely premise has is wasted on reworking the same gag about overconsumption.