THE JONESES

dMYD
Starring David Duchovny and Demi Moore
Trailer

M

The young guy in the eighties business movie with the chequered tie and huge framed glasses has nothing left for the meeting with the big-wigs and he sweats and he mumbles as he stands to the head of the table all eyes on him it’s time to get fired and he looks about and he clears his throat he’s got nothing he’s got nothing for this fiscal quarter he’ll be eaten by the wolves think of something think of something now now NOW: ‘I uh… uh…I… STEALTH MARKETING.’ He stares. He’s silent. The older board members sit back, light cigarettes, smile. He’s laughed out of the room. He jumps.
Of course it’s ridiculous. Dead-eyed scumbags and struggling students acting around you, all the time, faking their lives and yours for the ability to sell three more cans of Cloven Hoof scented body spray? It’s the stupidest idea since David Cameron. It’s evil, rotting and warping the very reality around you into a commercial fug of unknowingness; it’s the end of Dollhouse where the corporate world bursts over the earth with fake humans and fake personalities, no one knowing who to trust, but this time… it’s to sell you something. Again. Always to sell you something. The most ridiculous part is that ‘Stealth Marketing’ is completely real, and it’s started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_marketing
The Joneses is probably the first mainstream movie to address this detestable headfuck, but yesterdays’ paranoid yet prescient sci-fi toss is this afternoon’s limping, predictathon romantic comedy; it’s not a great film. A hammer-powered smackdown between frightening satire and Hollywood bollocks, presumably the backers of the film were too terrified of losing future funding to allow a complete damning of product-world, preferring instead to slap a patronizing, humanizing ending onto a previous hour of refreshingly warped family values. The characters bizarrely react to each other like a real household, making it pleasantly odd to watch as daughter bed-hops with dad and mum sends the kids to their rooms for not making enough sales, though this weirdery rarely strays into actual entertainment; as a comedy it’s as hilarious as tetanus. The whole thing works as a simplistic reveal of how commercialism is slapping it’s way into our basest moral make-up, but to learn up on the creeping phenomenon its probably better to actually read about it or something before the smiling corporations stick an extension cord into your neck to pump adverts for meat straight into your purchasing cells. Nice try against the inevitable wave of evil though, and Duchovny does his best with a mouthful of exposition. It’s almost a shame that a movie built on advertising has the most boring title in the history of film; no one’s going to see it, and it’ll be too late. Now quit your moaning and saddle up; we’re all going to Burger King, to cheat on a cow or something. What?