Written and Directed by Derrick Borte
Story by Randy T. Dinzle
USA
98 min.
2009
Rated R
Consider The Joneses--from first-time writer/director Derrick Borte--to be perhaps the first post-recession film, a satire that takes aim at the purportedly American ambition to acquire the latest, greatest, and biggest.
Steve Jones (David Duchovny), his wife Kate (Demi Moore), and their children Jenn (Amber Heard) and Mick (Ben Hollingsworth), move into their suburban McMansion. The American dream, circa 2000, right? Friendly, confident and good-looking, they are also loaded with the coolest, newest gizmos and gadgets.
They acquire a pair of dedicated fans in their next-door neighbors Larry (Gary Cole) and Summer (Glenne Headly)--a devoted couple, yet wont to keep secrets (it is suburbia, after all). It's not long before fissures in the Jones family begin to open. When a catastrophe occurs next door, they are forced to reevaluate their priorities.
"In its amiable, ambling way, The Joneses is a zeitgeist film: it says as much as a Michael Moore screed about the American way of debt." --Richard Corliss, Time (Rated R for language and some sexual content.)
