Keeping Up With the Joneses

Keeping Up With the Joneses

Keeping Up With the Joneses is an action comedy directed by Greg Mottola which was released on October 2016. The film stars Gal Gadot, Isla Fisher, Jon Hamm and Zach Galifianakis all of which are big names in the industry by not all are known for comedic roles. The film is set in the suburbs where a couple find out their neighbours are spies. The film had a budget of $40,000,000 but on the opening weekend made just under $5,500,000.

An important aspect of this film is definitely performance. Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher are known for previous comedic roles. Jon Hamm has had some comedic roles, (Minions) but is mostly known for more serious roles like Mad Men and Gal Gadot is mainly known for her roles in Wonder Woman and the Fast and Furious movies. The importance of this is that by having a mix of well known comedic actors and well known action actors could change how the viewer interprets the film. The doesn't take it self to seriously, purposefully making the characters appear comedic, but the characters act in a serious manner. They believe that everything they are doing is the proper response to what should happen in the situations they face. This makes the film, in my opinion, more funny because the characters almost seem oblivious. The performance in this film is significant because the audience know wha to expect from the film as due to the well known actors and the usual characters they play. The film almost mocks other spy films, like James Bond, because they are making fun of what is usually seen in spy films. Everything is not as smooth or as fancy as the audience may have seen in other films. The performance within the film backs this point up because the characters appear to be serious but still manage to get everything wrong or mess everything up.
A key scene in this film that clearly shows the impact of the performance is when Natalie and Tim (Gadot and Ham) show up to save Karen and Jeff (Fisher and Galifianakis). Karen and Jeff count down so they can run away and create a diversion, however, when they get to two Jeff runs off before Karen messing up their plan. This is significant because it shows both a serious and childlike side to the characters and also shows the main themes in the film which are Relationships and Friendship as they show how each character reacts to each other. Whilst they come up with a plan to get themselves out of the situation they mess it up by Jeff accidentally "getting a head start in his wife" and Tim and Natalie arriving to save the day as they usually do.

A film that could be compared to Keeping up with the Joneses is 'Kingsman: Secret Service'. Keeping up with the Joneses purposefully creates comedic elements through out the entirety of the film and contains the characters that are naturally funny, whereas Kingsman takes a more serious approach but also contains some comedic moments by showing what would really happen if 'normal people' were spies. Kingsman does the same as Keeping up with the Joneses in the sense that they mock spy films like James Bond by showing everything not to be as serious and fancy as films normally do.