--- title: The Joneses Tries to Shake Up the ‘Hood description: As long as there's suburbia, there will always be movies about near-middle-aged couples reckoning with their dull lives. Greg Mottola's Keeping Up with the Joneses... canonical: https://time.com/4540121/the-joneses-tries-to-shake-up-the-hood/ author: Stephanie Zacharek article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-21T09:58:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T01:20:09.666Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The Joneses Tries to Shake Up the ‘Hood og:description: As long as there's suburbia, there will always be movies about near-middle-aged couples reckoning with their dull lives. Greg Mottola's Keeping Up with the Joneses... og:url: https://time.com/4540121/the-joneses-tries-to-shake-up-the-hood/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Joneses Tries to Shake Up the ‘Hood twitter:description: As long as there's suburbia, there will always be movies about near-middle-aged couples reckoning with their dull lives. Greg Mottola's Keeping Up with the Joneses... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The _Joneses_ Tries to Shake Up the 'Hood  by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Oct 21, 2016 9:58 AM CUT  by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Oct 21, 2016 9:58 AM CUT As long as there’s suburbia, there will always be movies about near-middle-aged couples reckoning with their dull lives. Greg Mottola’s _Keeping Up with the Joneses_ gives us a new incarnation of these woebegone creatures, Karen (Isla Fisher) and Jeff (Zach Galifianakis), who live on a street with maple in its name and spend Friday nights cozied up with the DVR. Enter new neighbors Tim (Jon Hamm) and Natalie (Gal Gadot), a dashing travel writer and a purring, leggy sophisticate with a food blog. Too perfect to be real, they’re actually spies, which is the tiny circular track the movie’s jokes run on. The worn-out gags include one in which Karen and Natalie try on racy lingerie together and another in which Tim takes the meek Jeff to a secret restaurant that serves only snake. Still, at its best _Keeping Up with the Joneses_ riffs on something very real: the existential loneliness of living in a place that’s just too perfect. Everyone needs new friends now and then–even ones who make you eat snake. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4540121/the-joneses-tries-to-shake-up-the-hood/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4540121/the-joneses-tries-to-shake-up-the-hood/"},"headline":"The Joneses Tries to Shake Up the 'Hood","datePublished":"2016-10-21T09:58:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T01:20:09.666Z","description":"As long as there's suburbia, there will always be movies about near-middle-aged couples reckoning with their dull lives. Greg Mottola's Keeping Up with the Joneses...","url":"https://time.com/4540121/the-joneses-tries-to-shake-up-the-hood/","keywords":["movies"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4540121/the-joneses-tries-to-shake-up-the-hood/","name":"The Joneses Tries to Shake Up the 'Hood"}}]}] ```