Join two-time Oscar nominee Kristi Zea for the “not-Hollywood-enough” director’s cut of The Joneses, never before shown in the U.S. A “jaw-dropping” premise (Rex Reed), great performances and a strong festival kick-off gave this fun satire of consumer culture early momentum. Then it stalled. After the film, producer Zea (Best Picture nomination for As Good As It Gets, Art Direction nomination for Revolutionary Road) takes us behind the scenes to learn what happened.
“The Joneses is a zeitgeist film: it says as much as a Michael Moore screed about the American way of debt. It’s also a feature-length joke about Hollywood’s mania for product placement — and an instructively entertaining way to spend an evening, with no hidden charges.”—Richard Corliss, Time
“The movie sends out porcupine quills of social criticism, finding the soft underbelly of the debt-driven, compulsive materialism that is a pervasive aspect of American life. Suavely updating the iconography of suburban emptiness and avoiding overstatement, Mr. Borte conjures up a pleasant Stepford that runs less on robotic conformity than on endless, anxious competition. The key to the film is that it allows this life to have some real appeal.” —A.O. Scott, New York Times
96 minutes, rated R for some sexual content, teen drinking and drug use.
