Dream Merchants

Welcome to the hard-driving sales culture the way only Americana can! Steve and Kate Jones (David Duchovny and Demi Moore), and children Jenn and Mick (Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth) form a family “unit” – the Jone$es – planted in an upmarket suburban neighborhood by their employer, a marketing company – to peddle the wares of the latter’s clients through their lifestyle. Out come the trendy furniture and designer clothes, and perfumes and cereal and golf clubs – and the sales keep rolling. But beneath all this is the undercurrent of the unit continuously questioning their vacuous existence, and the possibilities of the unit actually behaving like an actual family – spurred by the strains of a growing attachment between “husband” and “wife”. The sales culture has its casualties on both sides, and in the end, something in the cold culture does give. An entertaining if marginally over-the-top look at ways and means to create demand where none existed, and simultaneously questioning the ethics of it all

13/20