DOWNSIZING Review

Immediately after walking out of director Alexander Payne's latest, Downsizing, I wasn't sure what to think. My first thought was that it was all over the place, but in a commendable way. I think I like it, I thought. I'm still pretty sure I enjoyed it and it has been quite some time since I saw it. Everything about the film though, is designed to upend your expectations of it. Being an Alexander Payne film titled Downsizing one immediately assumes this is will be a raw human drama about a middle-aged white male losing his job and realizing his life never amounted to the ambitions of his youth while likely coming to terms with the passing of time and its fleeting nature. It would be fair to assume that, but this Downsizing is not. Rather, the consistently good yet similarly themed films of the writer/director seem to have sparked a need for a different kind of endeavor in Payne and while Downsizing still shares a number of ideas (maybe one too many, even) that have very clearly sprung from what is on Payne's mind at the moment he certainly doesn't go about conveying them in the fashion one might expect given his filmography. Rather, Downsizing is very much designed to be one of those sincere, but rather goofy high-concept comedies of the nineties. One where everything in the world of the movie isn't that bad for our protagonist even though they seem to be discouraged by the results of what they've become i.e. lame adults. One where the production design relates this new technological advancement to something familiar a la the microwave "ding!" that goes off each time the shrinking procedure is complete. One where the score is heavily made-up of those cheesily inspiring springs that intend to make the audience really feel the wonder of the moment at the film's main discovery (think Jurassic Park). I guess, in a lot of ways, Downsizing is like Jurassic Park as it is a movie that revels in a discovery that is potentially the greatest thing since landing on the moon while also being one where man plays God; warning us of the potential dangers of technology. These advancements in both films, one being cloning dinosaurs and the other being shrinking humans, are thought of inherently as beneficial. While Downsizing ultimately seems to be for the better it doesn't shy away from the controversy that grows to surround the procedure and so, unlike Jurassic Park, Payne isn't preaching that just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. He seems to think we should. He knows we need to do something and Downsizing is a way of saying as much about saving the planet without being overly serious or hackneyed about it. Too bad it doesn't have dinosaurs though.

KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES Review

There is a point in the newest comedy from director Greg Mottola where it seems this broad comedy might rise above the grind it seems so destined to follow, but it only ends up being a brief moment of wackiness that Mottola and crew don’t care to dedicate themselves to carrying out. Rather, Keeping Up With the Joneses continues its stride toward the mediocre with very little to serve as surprising or inspired despite being made by the guy who put together Superbad and Adventureland. Yes, Mottola, the man who directed the likes of one of the great high school comedies of the last fifteen years as well as tapping into the struggles of that weird time post-college where you’re not sure where to go from that point has made a movie for the first time in five years that in fact couldn’t feel more uninspired. My hope, when I saw that Mottola was directing, was that the trailers and TV spots for the film might intentionally be setting our expectation bar low so that when we finally saw the finished product we might be taken with how much better it actually is than we expected. And while this does somewhat happen given the trailers and TV spots indeed made this look terrible in the vein of a run of the mill comedy that says let's put your average person in the midst of a ridiculous situation and see how funny they act in response to it kind of way. Still, with the talent Mottola and the studio garnered for this project my hope was that the film might bring something deeper or more acute to the scenario of superspies in suburbia, but there is no such sly observations or social commentary to be found in Keeping Up With the Joneses. Unfortunately, all we have here is a wacky situational comedy that too often relies on lead Zach Galifianakis’ one-liners too lift it from the doldrums of the generic jokes and obvious pratfalls Michael LeSieur’s screenplay is built on. LeSieur (You, Me & Dupree) seems the type of comedy writer who comes up with an interesting or funny enough scenario and then applies it to a familiar structure making the final product more predictable than laugh-inducing. That said, Keeping Up With the Joneses is about as good (and bad) as one would expect given the terrible trailers. It’s familiar and overly safe, but the fun performances from each of the four leads lend it a spring in its step that otherwise would have left this thing dead on arrival.

First Trailer for KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES

Just as with this past weekend's Central Intelligence 20th Century Fox has mined the spy genre and mixed it with comedy and a broad premise that should ultimately deliver something wholly agreeable to be enjoyed by the majority of those who venture out to see it. With a headlining cast of Jon Hamm, Wonder Woman herself Gal Gadot, Zach Galifianakis, and Isla Fisher Keeping Up With the Joneses is destined to be something of a smaller scale hit for the studio that will inevitably find a bigger fan base once it hits home video. The premise is simple: we initially meet a regular suburban couple (Fisher and Galifianakis) who are in something of a rut, but who find things immediately spiced up by the presence of two outrageously attractive and seemingly perfect neighbors in Hamm and Gadot. Of course, the more they get to know their new neighbors the more they learn about them thus revealing the "Joneses" to be exactly how they appear-covert super spies! While the concept is fairly broad and the execution doesn't look to be anything more than acceptable I have hope for the project due to the fact Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) is behind the camera. Mottola is typically able to bring a certain tone and unique charisma to his comedies that allow them to stand out in the sea of studio produced comedies that seem to come off conveyor belts, but while this trailer certainly makes his latest feel like just another product in a long line of similar projects I'm hoping that when we see the actual film we get more of that specific tone and charm we usually see in the director's work. Of course, as the screenplay comes from Michael LeSieur whose biggest credit to date is You, Me, & Dupree this could really go either way. Keeping Up With the Joneses also stars Patton Oswalt, Matt Walsh, Maribeth Monroe, Kevin Dunn, Ming Zhao, and opens on October 21st, 2016.