Film File - The Joneses

Kate and Steve Jones (Demi Moore and David Duchovny) appear to have it all - the kind of people, yes, that we would all want to keep up with. A seemingly perfect couple who, along with their equally perfect teenagers (Amber Hear and Ben Hollingsworth) move into an upscale gated community. The family have better possessions than any other family in town, despite living an apparent lifestyle without the income required to support it. The thing is, the Joneses are not a family at all, they are employees of a stealth marketing organisation whose job is to make everyone else want what they've got. Writer/director Derrick Borte admitted to being fascinated by the resourceful ways advertisers use to get products into consumers' minds. Back in the pre-smoking ban days, he remembered that models were hired to sit in bars smoking certain brands of cigarettes in a crude form of brand awareness. Borte wanted to take the notion a step further by having a whole family become a walking advertising space for multiple products - a high concept in the truest sense of the word. Pushing the age-old notion of thinking the other man's grass is always greener, the Joneses come to town as the glamorous mom and confident dad in possession of the right car, the perfect golf clubs, the ideal designer gear. Even the grass on their lawn is, well, greener. If their neighbours can't be as perfect as them, they can at least buy the same products, or so the theory goes. Likewise with the kids - perfect teenagers who manage to get all their impressionable school friends interested in a certain alcoholic fruit drink. Everything the Joneses have pushes the sales higher as the neighbours get reeled in - the more they spend, the more Kate and Steve push extra products in their path. As a message on the frailty of following consumer trends without thought to need or cost, 'The Joneses' seems a very apt film for Ireland in 2010 as the country continues to count the cost of the recently buy-or-die Tiger years. Cleverly plotted by Borte, the story will surely resonate across the western world as the final bill for the sub-prime lifestyle comes through the letterbox. Moore and Duchovny are ideal as good-looking salespeople posing as a couple, a situation that becomes even more amusing when they begin to have feelings for each other and are unsure how to act upon it. Themselves as much victims of the sales pitch as the neighbours who blindly follow them, the perfect family find it hard to distinguish the line between make-believe and real-life after a while. As a parable for greed and consumption, 'The Joneses' says something to us all. As for Demi Moore - we all know she had some surgical enhancement done recently, but if anyone knows the tablets she's taking to stay so believably young-looking, this reviewer will be first in the pharmacy queue for them.