Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Keeping Up With The Joneses - Simple Suburban Couple Meet the Perfect Couple Neighbors

Finally I had the time to watch this movie last night, after it premiered for almost a week. I was so busy this past week and was looking forward to watch this one using the free vouchers from Cinemaxx and wanted to watch during the weekend, but since my wife and I were not in Jakarta, we have to postpone it until yesterday only. Anyway the movie was just what I needed after having long days at the office as it seemed to be a funny film based on the trailer. So let's find out more on the movie.

Brief Story Line

A suburban couple named Jeff Gaffney (Zach Galifianakis - The Hangover trilogy etc) who was working in Human Resource department in a technology development company named MBI and his wife Karen (Isla Fisher - Confessions of a Shopaholic, Now You See Me etc) who was an interior designer were having the perfect life with their 2 sons. When their children were sent away for a camp trip for 2 weeks, the Gaffneys were suddenly having free time from their children and they already had some  "bright ideas" on how to spend it. 


Later a new couple who seemed to lead a perfect life moved into their neighborhood. Tim Jones (Jon Hamm - Million Dollar Arm, Mad Men TV series etc) and his wife Natalie (Gal Gadot - Fast and Furious 4-6, Batman Vs Superman etc) were telling the Gaffneys that after years of travelling around the world, they wanted to set foot and planting roots. Jeff who was a very warm people person, was very happy with the addition of this couple in their neighborhood which happened to be filled with a lot of MBI employees as well, including Dan (Matt Walsh - Into The Storm etc) and his wife Meg the real estate agent (Maribeth Monroe).

Jeff started to be bonding with Tim whom he found to be a cool person and looked genuinely interested with him. There were some hilarious moments during this bonding. Meanwhile Karen however, felt that there was something off with the Joneses. She believed they were too perfect, especially when she saw Tim went out of Jeff's room during the neighborhood's gathering. Due to her free time, she became obsessed with the Joneses and started to stalk them and especially Natalie. There was also few absurd and crazy moments involving the two of them.

After finding out something that seemed to convince Karen, she and Jeff would begin to investigate the Joneses background. Jeff who really had positive thoughts about Tim was sure that Karen had let her imagination and paranoia gone wild. However, he still accompanied Karen on her investigation at the Joneses' house. So what would Jeff and Karen find in there? Could they get away from the Joneses' house without being caught? What were actually the Joneses' background and why did they seem to have great interests in Jeff? Find them all in this fun movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Well this movie indeed gave my wife and I some good laughs. There were some scenes that were quite hilarious, but there were also scenes that were less funny. I think that the lack of audience in the cinema (perhaps due to film had played for almost 1 week) contributed to the lack of laughters as well. Sometimes when you watch movie with lots of people and they all laugh together, it tend to be contagious and we would normally be laughing as well. 

The story was quite simple. Not a lot of twists (even if there was, it should be easy to identify or guess). It's not supposed to be an over complicated story as it is a movie just for fun. No need to over analyze the plots, or why this and that. This is a movie of pure enjoyment and for laughs. It's good for watching when you want something to brighten your days.

The special effects, sound effects and the actions scenes were pretty decent. It's also fun to see Gal Gadot playing in a comedy movie. Whereas Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher were quite frequent playing in comedic roles. However I am not too familiar with Jon Hamm. One thing that my wife spotted was how slim Zach was now, compared to his previous movies. Oh before I forgot, this movie is rated for over 17 years old by the Indonesian censorship body, and I can understand why as there were some scenes of sexuality (though I felt they were more comedic rather than dirty scenes). 

So if you enjoy some comedy action movie with famous stars, then you can definitely enjoy this. It's not of the quality of Spy (starred Melissa McCarthy), but it also had some moments where you can certainly laughed out loud. But if you enjoy more of intelligent spy movie with lots of special effects such as James Bond or Jason Bourne movies, then most likely you would be disappointed. So the choice is yours.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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