Are the most memorable thing in the first trailer for Keeping Up With the Joneses. It’s an action-comedy that looks like a cross between Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Burbs with a dash of Date Night thrown in, and stars Isla Fisher, Zach Galifianakis—who I BARELY recognized—Jon Hamm, and Gadot. They’re married couples in the suburbs except Hamm and Gadot are secretly spies. I don’t know about this one. The trailer isn’t really making me laugh, although Zach Galifianakis running into things is always funny because he’s such a good physical comedian.
But it’s tough to tell with comedy trailers. Spy didn’t look all that funny, either, and it turned out to be very funny. Ditto for Popstar. So the Joneses could turn out to be a case where the trailers coast on the merely passable B stuff and hold the A material for the movie itself. But nothing in here looks particularly memorable, does it?
Everyone’s all over the ghost-puke gag in NuGhostbusters, saying it’s dumb and a sign that the movie will be dumb, too. But that gag is memorable, and gives the NuGhosbusters an instantly-identifiable reference. Maybe the movie will suck, we don’t know yet, but the presence of a stand-out gag like that usually means someone put some thought into building a whole sequence around a specific punchline. I’m trying to figure out what in Keeping Up With the Joneses looks like someone put some work into it, besides Gal Gadot’s abs. Though to be fair, this movie at least looks better than Bad Moms.
