There's an interesting opening sequence in "The Joneses," an imaginative touch that carries product placement to new heights. A moving van tools into a very fancy suburb, parks in front of an equally fancy house. A team of movers unloads the truck and starts arranging furniture according to a very detailed plan. A truck carries a pair of snazzy cars, leaves them in the driveway. This is upscale at its uppermost.
The family of the title, Steve (David Duchovny) and Kate (Demi Moore), along with their rather elderly teenage children (Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth) arrive in a luxury car and walk right in. Clothes are in the closets, appliances in the kitchen, table practically set for dinner.
And in a very few minutes, we learn that this is all a setup. The Jones and their children are actors, portraying an ultimate group of low-key sales people. Everything on their backs, on their table, in their rooms, is for sale, and the Joneses sell hard, making sure that everyone on the block, everyone in the school, everyone in the country club soon knows the brand names and the selling locations. They work for KC, a hard-as-nails Lauren Hutton, still distinctive and still sexy, who rides in a chauffeur-driven car with tinted windows, lays down the law to her employees and moves on.
With Gary Cole and Glenne Headley playing the next-door neighbors, swept away by then charm and the living standards of the Joneses, the movie is fun for a while, but there's a rocky shoal under the surface of the gorgeous swimming pool and to mix a metaphor, everything will go down in flames.
An interesting semi-local point: The beer of choice is Stella Artois, an ABIB brand sold on the level of Stag or Old Milwaukee in Paris corner bars, but being pushed here as a luxury item, a move that shows about as much respect for the brewery's customers as it showed for its employees.
Opens today at several theaters
–Joe