Keeping Up with the Joneses *** (2016, Zach Galifianakis, Isla Fisher, Jon Hamm, Gal Gadot, Patton Oswalt, Kevin Dunn) – Movie Review

Director Greg Mottola’s 2016 action comedy is a surprise success, pulling off the difficult trick of recycling a familiar premise and some tired old situations and still managing to be funny.

Mottola’s got Galifianakis to calm right down and pull off a surprisingly amusing low key performance as HR man Jeff Gaffney, who lives in a quiet cul-de-sac with his nice homely wife Karen (Isla Fisher). All is blissfully well for the dull suburban couple, until the seemingly perfect Joneses (Jon Hamm, Gal Gadot) move in next door.

Jeff and Karen find their new neighbours Tim and Natalie are government spies and get mixed up in their bid to stop an idiotic international espionage plot masterminded by the equally idiotic Scorpion (Patton Oswalt).

If Galifianakis gets his laughs the calm, low key route, it’s left to Fisher to over-act amusingly as the first to rumble the neighbours and get hysterical, while Hamm and Gadot take the straight man and woman way to their laughs, and both of them are most effective and funny.

Michael LeSieur’s screenplay has lots of funny gags and Mottola provides the dynamic energy the script needs so the film never flags and like its characters and actors, remains likeable. I didn’t expect to laugh much, but there I was chortling away merrily for the whole 105 minutes.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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