If there is one comedic actor I have grown tired of outside of Seth Rogen, it is Zach Galifianakis. I have never been a particular fan of his work; the only project of his I genuinely enjoyed was the short-lived television series Tru Calling more than a decade ago. A couple of weeks earlier I sat through Masterminds, a film that combined Galifianakis’s most grating mannerisms with the broadest, laziest strain of Saturday Night Live-style writing. I did not formally review that movie, but it is a lock for my list of the year’s worst. Given that track record, Keeping Up with the Joneses arrived with every ingredient necessary for an unmitigated disaster.
The story follows a married couple living in suburban Georgia, Jeff and Karen Gaffney (Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher). With their children away at summer camp, they suddenly have the house to themselves—and immediately settle into a routine of catching up on streaming shows. Jeff works in human resources for a major aerospace company, mediating employee disputes. The film treats the job as inherently ridiculous and unimportant, even though an HR role at a defense contractor would reasonably carry some actual responsibility. Karen is an interior designer whose professional decisions include such inspired choices as installing a urinal in a residential bathroom. When an attractive, impossibly accomplished couple moves in next door, Karen becomes immediately suspicious and begins a full Rear Window-style surveillance operation to uncover their true intentions.
I am no longer sure whether Hollywood is deliberately producing comedy that is not funny or whether it has simply forgotten what generates genuine laughter. The jokes in this film operate at pure sitcom level. Imagine watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory with the laugh track removed; the silence makes painfully clear how little is actually amusing. The movie works so hard for every chuckle that you can feel the pauses where a big reaction was expected and simply never arrives. The plot offers no rescue. Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot play the new neighbors, who turn out to be spies for a shadowy agency. They may be the least competent secret agents ever put on screen, having their cover blown multiple times over the course of the story. They have moved next door because they believe Jeff is using his work computer for espionage. The truth, of course, is far more mundane and involves a different neighbor entirely—something Jeff remains oblivious to for far too long.
Trailers for comedies like this have become their own form of false advertising. Nearly every gag that lands even mildly is already spoiled in the marketing, and there are not many of them to begin with. The single funniest sequence—an underground extreme-snake-restaurant encounter involving Hamm, Galifianakis, and Bobby Lee—occurs in the first fifteen minutes. Even the sight of Gal Gadot in lingerie fails to generate the intended spark. The story is thin, the performances are largely on autopilot, and the jokes are consistently flat. The film does contain the seed of a potentially interesting idea about long-married couples drifting through safe, uneventful suburban lives and suddenly confronting something more exciting. It never develops that angle with any real wit or insight.
Keeping Up with the Joneses is simply not funny. It is not clever, not charming, and not worth the time. The cast is capable of better, the premise had room to become something sharper, and the finished product squanders both. You will not miss anything by giving this one a complete pass.
1/5
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