Keeping Up With The Joneses

This review may contain spoilers!

As far as action-comedies go this one felt pretty tame. I would give Keeping Up With The Joneses a 4/10.

There was definitely a witty quality to this film, the mockery of suburban life and aspects of modern day culture was a lot of fun. The way the spy characters were incorporated into the film also worked out pretty well, it was charming to see the leads interacting with one another in these particular scenarios.

Zach Galifianakis, who played Jeff Gaffney, is an odd yet charming lead for this film; Galifianakis really utilises his tendency towards awkward humour to deliver one liners or comedic dialogue in a really unique way. Isla Fisher, who played Karen Gaffney, really stands out when it comes to the four leads; Fisher's parody of a suburban mum who is overly suspicious and paranoid is a lot of fun to watch. Jon Hamm, who played Tim Jones, gives an exceptionally charismatic performance in this film; I really enjoyed the chemistry that developed between him and Galifianakis. Gal Gadot, who played Natalie Jones, really gave the men in this film a run for their money when she could; Gadot really fit the spy role and especially delivered the intensity a role like that required.

However the best performance came from Patton Oswalt, who played the Scorpion. I love when action comedies unmask the antagonist and it's immensely satisfying. Oswalt brought a lot of energy the minute he appeared which was a great start, the film had started to fizzle out and Oswalt raised the stakes back up. I felt that this character had a loose demeanour in which Oswalt could let out his comedic side but it also felt convincing when he was wielding a weapon and threatening the protagonists. Certainly a very fun action-comedy bad guy.

The film itself was very safe and never went out of it's way to be side-splittingly funny; therefore it just became predictable and quite similar to most every other film in the genre. The pacing really reflected this, the long wait between moments of suspense or action meant the film started to come to a crawl quite early on. The cinematography had a lot of potential but ultimately didn't aim high enough, we were left with basic framing and action scenes shot in a rather dull way. The editing wasn't particularly impressive either, if the narrative wasn't providing ba pacing already then the editing secured it. The score was a bit over the top at times, often feeling like it didn't really match the scenes it was put to; the soundtrack was barely noticeable.

Matt Walsh and Maribeth Monroe, who played Dan Craverston and Meg Craverston, were given far too much screen time and importance in this film; Walsh felt tired and barely put in any effort while Monroe was overperforming at every turn. Michael Liu, who played Yang, was dealt as a funny one off scene character that wasn't all that funny; in fact his performance was quite forgettable and overshadowed by Galifianakis and Hamm. Kevin Dunn, who played Carl Pronger, has no reason at all to be in this film; Dunn's only real purpose was to deliver a minute amount of exposition but even that didn't deserve the amount of screen time this character got. Richard Regan Paul and Jona Xiao, who played Sanjay and Stacey Chung respectively, were characters the film slotted in to stretch out the run time; all these performers provided were lazy scenes and weak performances.