Critic Reviews

The most surprising thing about Keeping Up with the Joneses isn’t that it’s actually funny, but that some touching unlikely friendships emerge amidst the outrageous action sequences.

The best moments come in seeing Galifianakis’s costars try to keep up with him as he finally, frantically lets loose.

An amiable time-killer of an espionage comedy.

Still, at its best Keeping Up with the Joneses riffs on something very real: the existential loneliness of living in a place that’s just too perfect. Everyone needs new friends now and then – even ones who make you eat snake.

Keeping Up With The Jonses plays everything so disappointingly safe.

Galifianakis steals the show as the friendly fussbudget in a performance we've come to expect from him. The enormous potential on screen is tantalizing, which is why the disappointment of failed execution stings.

Director Greg Mottola deserves some credit for trying to give the film a little bit of cinematic flair, something that’s lacking in many Hollywood comedies these days.

Between Zach Galifianakis, Isla Fisher, Jon Hamm, and Gal Gadot, Keeping Up with the Joneses has a stacked cast, but thanks to a tepid script from Michael LeSieur (You, Me and Dupree), they don’t actually get that much to do.

Relying wholly on good casting and the charisma of its actors, big and small, to elevate too-familiar material, the film’s stale humor hinges on two faulty premises: That the suburbs are inscrutable and that the people who live in them are clueless.

Keeping Up With the Joneses is hardly worth the effort.