The Joneses

The Joneses: For a while, at least, a pitch-black tale of our times: Four business partners masquerading as a happy family move into suburbia and sell their friends and neighbors on their early-adopter, newer-than-brand-new layaway lifestyle. David Duchovny, Demi Moore, Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth are the client-sponsored grifters; they bait their prey with the latest and greatest. But, sadly, the audience is conned most of all. What plays hard and dark for the film’s first half goes squishy and blindingly bright as calamity and then outright tragedy lead to the saw-it-coming. For whatever reason, the movie goes soft: Business turns to pleasure turns to hurt, and the moral to the story becomes the story, shrug. —Robert Wilonsky