A cool concept about a new kind of corporate sales. Stars David Duchovny, Demi Moore, Amber Heard, Ben Hollingsworth and Lauren Hutton,
The story: the Jonses move into an upscale neighborhood and start schmoozing with everyone and showing off all their cool toys -- from cars to clothes to golf clubs to frozen foods -- except they aren't a real family. They are a sales plant, a new way of influencing consumers on a ground floor level. But the fake husband and the fake wife (Duchovny and Moore) start to have real feeling for each other even as their cover unwinds.
Was it good?
It was pretty good. The concept is an interesting one and when the story is focused on these people making sales and trying to drive consumer interest it is pretty cool. The problem is that the story begins to veer away from that -- about the fake husband and fake wife falling for each other, the fake daughter starting an affair with a married man, the fake son and his issues, etc -- and while none of those are horrible, none of them were interesting and it sets up a very boring turn where they reject the consumer/sales life for *yawn* real love. Which, while a nice sentiment, seemed pretty lame and cliche here. You'd think that a movie with a cool concept like this would dig a little deeper, but no. So it doesn't go for biting satire and it doesn't say anything really about the way we influence people or the way corporations influence us...it just devolves into a love is really important story which didn't feel genuine at all.
Again, if the concept is about a fake family moving in to influence people and sell product, then you'd think they would get deeper into those issues. But no, they wuss out. Really they needed to take the external concept and come up with a throughline that was more interesting or more interesting or more effective. It also might have been more interesting if they had shown them struggling to make sales. Really, anything they wanted to sell they sell no problem. On one hand they want to make it sound like there's a lot of pressure on them, but we never see them struggle, so it becomes fairly empty and it undercuts any stakes in terms of their job (which is the core concept).
Still, there was enough interesting stuff that it still almost got a complete recommend.
*** RECOMMEND FOR RENTAL ***
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