Who doesn’t do a little fence peering once in a while? It’s human nature to be a little nosey about your neighbours -it even led, in some small part, to the end of the East West divide in Germany – but in Keeping Up With The Joneses, the bar about to get hiked up beyond the point of reasonable competition. What do you do when you find out that your seemingly perfect next-door neighbours are in fact are secret agents? You do everything in your power to go one better.
The action comedy has got the funny bone might of Zach Galifianakis behind it, combined with the Wonder Woman skills of Gal Gadot, so the cast looks impressive. It’s also got the directorial stewardship of Greg Motolla to help to keep things upright and with credits that include Arrested Development, Superbad, Adventureland and Paul he could be a big part of the potential success of the film.
Release date
The Keeping Up With The Joneses UK release date looks set to be Friday the 21st October 2016, arriving on the same date as in the US and Canada. It’ll be out in the UK on the same weekend as Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and the Disney chess biography Queen Of Katwe, so it’s going to have its work cut out to feature high up in the box office charts.
Story
The story follows a suburban couple who find themselves spying on their new, hyper-perfect neighbours, the Joneses. However, when it turns out that the overachieving next-door goodytwoshoes are actually real spies the tables turn and they become mixed up in a massive international espionage programme that sees them staring down the barrel of guns, wearing wire taps and dressing way more stylishly than they’re used to.
Cast
Zach Galifianakis (Birdman) plays dependable husband and father Jeff Gaffney with Isla Fisher (The Great Gatsby) starring as his wife Karen. On the other side of the Keeping Up With The Joneses spy fence is Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman (2017)) as the dart-throwing perfection that is Natalie Jones and Jon Hamm (Minions) as her secret agent husband Tim.
Production
Greg Mottola directs the film with the screenplay written by Michael LeSieur. Laurie McDonald and Walter F. Parkes have produced the film with 20th Century Fox releasing the action comedy.
First impressions
On paper, Keeping Up With The Joneses sounds like it should be hilarious, but the trailer (below) doesn’t really sell it all that well with Galifianakis looking far from his best. He’s slimmed down a little for some reason, so maybe he’s lost a bit of his comedy might in the process, but hopefully they’re just saving his best moments for the full release in October.
The scenes with Isla Fisher and Gal Godot are the strongest, so maybe that will be enough to win us around. The height difference changing room joke is very clever with some good quiet comedy skills from both of the female leads. If there’s more of this in the film then it could be a surprise hit, but based on the trailer as a whole we’re a bit skeptical, despite our general love for Galifianakis.
