Keeping Up With The Joneses

There's this weird genre that has popped up lately where spies or assassins move to the suburbs and inevitably get caught up in hijinks. Examples are generally along the line of Killers or Mr and Mrs Smith. Invariably the result is never a good one because they always seem to be missed opportunities. While there are some decent moments and some great actors in Keeping Up With The Joneses, it also happens to miss the mark.

Jeff (Zach Galifianakis) and Karen Gaffney (Isla Fisher) are just a regular couple living in the suburbs of Atlanta. Jeff works as the HR person at an aerospace company and Karen works as an interior designer. They are happy together in their small community and get excited when they see that some new neighbours are moving in. These new neighbours turn out to be the complete opposite to them. Tim Jones (Jon Hamm) is a travel writer whose hobby is glass blowing. His wife Natalie (Gal Gadot) runs a food blog and donates to charity. While they seem like the perfect neighbours to have, Karen does some digging and finds that they are actually spies looking into the company that Jeff works for.

As fun as the concept of highly trained professionals moving into suburbia is, it never pans out the way you want. This is especially true when it comes to comedies that use the premise. There aren't enough jokes to fill out the entire thing and you want to put minimal action in there because it would become an action movie otherwise. Also the way that this movie treats Gal Gadot is really bizarre. I'm not one to jump up and down about the treatment of women in movies, but what they've done here is made a character that is contrary to the concept. Natalie is supposed to be this physically strong spy, but she ends up being a character that is just there to be considered attractive. It also falls into the same traps as makeover movies from the 80s and 90s. They take Isla Fisher's character and make wear unattractive clothes, but 'fix' her by putting her in some lingerie or a tight dress.

The movie's casting is a strong choice that helps with the lack of written jokes. Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher are good comedic staples with which to build on. Galifianakis is always funniest when playing a guy from the south as he has mastered the accent pretty well. I was a bit unsure of what was going on with Fisher's accent. I thought she was going for a similar that Rose Byrne has been doing lately where she plays Australian characters, but she seemed to bounce between the two. Jon Hamm has shown now that he is pretty good at playing a goofy character. While he is supposed to be serious, there were moments that you could tell he was having fun. Comedian Bobby Lee also turns up in a stereotypical Asian role as the proprietor of a Chinese snake restaurant that's pretty funny. Patton Oswalt appears at the end as the bad guy, but has very little time and doesn't have a chance to get a good footing.

Keeping Up With the Joneses is not the best comedy to come out this year. It's not bad as such, but there is a lot of down time between jokes. These instances are glaringly obvious and just make for some hollow viewing.

Grimsby

Sacha Baron Cohen has taken a more restrained direction with his latest movie, Grimsby. Although it's not his first fully integrated fiction film, that was in 2012 with The Dictator, it is one where he hasn't gone over the top with his main character. That's not to say, however, that this film is filled with all the gross jokes you'd come to expect from his comedy. Combine these with an experienced action director like Louis Leterrier and you get a pretty enjoyable action-comedy.

Nobby (Baron Cohen) is living a happy life in the north of England. The only thing missing is his younger brother Sebastian (Mark Strong) who was adopted without him when they were younger. Sebastian is now a spy working for MI6 and Nobby finally gets a chance to reunite with him when he hears that Sebastian will be attending a charity event. Sebastian is actually at the event to prevent an assassination attempt on Rhonda George (Penélope Cruz), the head of a global health charity. Nobby manages to mess it up for him (and give Daniel Radcliffe AIDS in the process) and soon they are both on the run with MI6 believing Sebastian to be a rogue agent. The only way to clear his name is to find who was behind the attempt in the first place.

Grimsby is a pretty funny movie, I should say that right of the bat. But then again the jokes are the typical Sacha Baron Cohen "I'm going to shock you into laughing" jokes. They usually involve an extreme sexual gag, like Nobby having to suck a toxin from Sebastian's testicles. Some of these jokes come back in various forms throughout the film in more extreme instances than the last. Not all of them are as low-brow as these. There is a joke later about how guns remove guilt from the act of killing. That's a pretty complex joke once you think about it.

I do think Grimsby might be in need of some structural reshuffling. There was a missed opportunity in giving the audience some serious misdirection in the type of film they are watching. I think if they had have started on one of Sebastian's action missions and then reveal that it's actually a comedy. That's what I would have done anyway. The direction all up is fantastic. Louis Leterrier, who has previously worked on The Transporter series of films, brings his experience in action movies and melds it perfectly with Cohen's comedic sensibilities. The action sequences don't take up too much of the film, but they are snappy and well done when they do show.

Sacha Baron Cohen's Nobby is quite a fun character to watch. He really does mean well and he just wants to help his brother but he can't help from screwing up. A fun detail I realised was that his sideburns are mismatched in length, which is one of those small things Cohen does with his characters. Mark Strong has probably missed his chance to play James Bond (a shame if you ask me), but he does a great job playing him here. He has some rather subtle emotional moments after his flashbacks to when he and Nobby were younger that he carries quite nicely. Cohen's wife Isla Fisher is quite good as Sebastian's ally in MI6 and Rebel Wilson plays the same old character, this time just from the north of England. Although she's the main villain, Penélope Cruz hardly gets enough time to show off any of her acting skills.

While it may not be as punchy as Borat and Brüno, Grimsby is a pretty funny comedy of two worlds clashing together. Sometimes it can be a bit culturally homogenous and not all the references will be gotten, but watching Sacha Baron Cohen come up against a proper actor like Mark Strong makes it a pretty fun watch.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby showcases the glamour of the Roaring Twenties in New York, but also explores the dark seedy underbelly of the people who lived during that time.

The story follows young writer Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) moves to New York and gets caught up in the extravagant world of his neighbour, the enigmatic Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a mysterious businessman with an undying love for Nick's cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan). Daisy lives with her husband Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) on the other side of the bay to Nick and Gatsby. Carraway endeavours to find out more about Gatsby, his background and his fierce love for Daisy.

The relationship between Gatsby and Carraway is an interesting one. Nick is enamoured with Gatsby and not just his lavish lifestyle as many people who attend his parties are. It is interesting to note that early on, Buchanan makes reference to Carraway's voyeuristic tendencies.

The performances by DiCaprio and Maguire are quite amazing. DiCaprio plays this long sense of loneliness perfectly and Maguire's Carraway evolves from a naive, wide-eyed believer in life into a cynical person of the world around him.

Although Daisy's character is central to the plot and Mulligan's performance was superb, I felt as though her character was just a facilitator for confrontations between the male characters. I also felt as though there was no character development on her part. Relative newcomer Elizabeth Debicki shines as Jordan Baker, a professional golfer and friend of Daisy. She is one to look out for in the future.

Normally I am not a fan of Baz Luhrman's overindulgence (the only other film of his I enjoyed was Romeo + Juliet), but here it works. The film is visually stunning and does have a great ethereal feeling to it. However, when shots would pull back from the foreground and reveal a CGI horizon in the background, I did feel a bit removed from the world. Likewise, there are a few scenes in which the film looked like it was running at a faster frame rate, that while extremely subtle, through me off.

One aspect of the film that I thoroughly enjoyed was the soundtrack. I was a bit skeptical when I heard that Luhrmann was going to use hip-hop because 'it currently shares the same status that jazz held in the 20s', but he integrated it seamlessly into the film so that it was unnoticeable next to the jazz tracks.

Verdict: Despite some visual issues and character flaws, I felt as though this was an enjoyable look at drama in the Twenties. And it had one hell of a soundtrack.