“Keeping Up with the Joneses” and the Marketing of Cinematic Charisma

The director Greg Mottola has seen comedy from both sides now. When he made “Superbad,” he was in the realm of the un-screw-uppable. Directing a script by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, with a cast headed by such irrepressibly funny people and vital presences as Jonah Hill, Emma Stone, Michael Cera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and with Judd Apatow producing, Mottola could have slept through the shoot without making the film any less uproarious (though it would certainly have been less precise and warm). Now, as the director of the action comedy “Keeping up with the Joneses,” Mottola has been dealt a comic hand that leaves him bluffing, and huffing and puffing; his actors doubtless worked hard, but Mottola conspicuously worked harder, laboring mightily behind the scenes to bring the film’s mismatched parts to a strained semblance of antic life.