The Joneses

We’re let in on the Joneses’ secret right from the beginning. Presided over by David Duchovny and Demi Moore, they aren’t really the rich, happy family their suburban neighbours think they are. Rather, they are a team of salespeople who are masquerading in order to promote expensive items through peer pressure: whatever the Joneses have, the neighbours want. What we learn about consumerism from Derrick Borte’s film is so basic, it makes last year’s romcom on this subject, Confessions of a Shopaholic, look like a Marxist treatise. This wouldn’t have mattered had the comic drama of the characters’ secret lives been inventive, but what we get is a pretty shoddy bill of goods: Mr Jones tritely acquiring a conscience and developing real feelings for his pretend wife.