A fake family, really reps for an unnamed corporate entity, with 2 teenage "children" move into an upper crust neighborhood, with the sole intent of selling various lifestyle brands. They have no other job. The Dad golfs daily and the Mom goes to hair salons and hot yoga classes. The kids attend school. As everyone goes about their daily life, they casually promote various upscale brands, which neighbors soon envy and purchase. They appear like the perfect family on the surface. Everyone wants to emulate their glamorous lifestyle. They are successful with sales, but over time, various glitches in the plan begin to appear. Human emotions and frailties, the natural consequences of greed, and the need for real sexual fulfillment all interfere with working for "the company". There is a death, but also a happy ending.Overall, fairly well done. It will be a little food for thought, as well as some entertainment.

We use this term in France to speak about the new economy about an individual doing business instead of firms, shops, official sellers. So here it's the case as this fake family is in truth a team of sellers who have sales objectives and reward bonus. I'm surprised to see that an American movie dares questioning this trend because usually this materialist way of life is considered like paradise ! At first, the movie is thus intriguing as those facts aren't not told immediately so if you notice that the family is a bit unusual, you can't tell why. Next, if the movie plunges into dark waters as tension and problem arises inside and outside the family : in short, consumerism and objects are not what people needs because they look for feelings and ties. If Moore is well casted here because she is surely this calculating, cold business woman (look her look !) and "Fox" is his usual cool guy until he experiences a revelation, the real problem comes with the kids : the girl is ecstatic to have sex with an older married man (a bit like in her real life) while the boy is the poor persecuted gay coming out of his closet! so this is what the real problem with America today, its lack of familial values ! But i understand that this movie says it's bad to sell but it's OK to have sex with whom you want ! I say no to both so maybe this movie is indeed original in economics, but at the end, it totally misses what's it's essential….

If you're thinking about seeing this movie, stop reading. If you go in knowing too much about it, you will enjoy it far less. Just a warning. Basic plot summary: perfect family moves into great neighborhood, taking said neighborhood by storm. But all is not what it seems. That is ALL you need to know.Myself, I was just a fan of Duchovny and Moore, I had no clue about the other actors and just went in head first. Fairly early into the movie, before it was revealed, I said to myself, "These people are professional trendsetters. My God, what a great idea for a movie!" They're actually called 'stealth marketers' or some such terms. They do exist in the real world, but usually for something like cool people buying certain drinks in upscale bars to get others to buy them-as far as we know (wink wink).All the actors are brilliant, and there's even Mr. Lumbergh (Gary Cole)! There are no dead spots or extraneous exposition, everything fits and is well paced. Lots of little moments of sly, subtle humor, no loud belly laughs here. The fantastic premise of the movie is fleshed out by the exploration of the characters personal lives and this draws the majority of the movie going public in. How much would you give up for great personal wealth? To look at the answer, just look at the world around us. This movie asks, 'is it worth it'?Do you know why you like what you like? How do you know? Bill Hicks, the late comedian, once told his audience, "If there's anyone in sales in the audience-go kill yourselves. No I'm not joking, just kill yourselves". If Bill Hicks were to pitch a movie to Hollywood, it might look something like this. After a lot of 'notes' I'm sure.

This film starts as a promise: the plot is an interesting one, the actors are well known and the staged is attractive.The first half the story is developing and the viewer interest growing, the characters seem real: the girl striving to grow faster than her classmates, her brother defining his sexuality and the husband reconciling his needs with his role.However during the second part of the film, the whole plot starts to fall down like dominoes, the husband/wife relationship scenes take long unnecessary times, the amount of money that the neighbours spend on merchandise does not justifies in any way the contract and life style the Joneses have and last but not least the husband confession lacks credibility, due to the fact that he accepted the job knowing what it involved and also that he is only partially responsible for his neighbour deeds.Unfortunately the end is so out of context, just to have a happy ending.I think that the writer and the director had such a great opportunity to make a deep, well framed, based critic of the consumerism society and sadly they let it go, in order to pursue more known paths.Thus in the end, it really does not matter if the society is still ill or fail to modify its behaviour in order to re acquire sanity: NO the important part is that the couple leave everything in order to be happy.You are warned: the first half is entertaining and interesting, the second one, the structure falls like a house during an earthquake, predictable and surely.