Now on DVD: The Joneses

David Duchovny proves what a gifted light comedian he is in The Joneses. It's a shame Demi Moore is her same wooden self and the film barely hangs together.

It's a cute central conceit, though. The Joneses are the new family on the block; Daddy drives a sports car, Mummy holds fabulous parties and the brother has arms, and a smile, to kill for. Behind the facade, they're actually at the vanguard of selling; they're clothes horses for hire, they sport the newest watches, eat the most fashionable of fad foods and do it all ostentatiously – but with such confidence and good humour, it's completely forgivable. None of them are related, and all of them are actors.

All kinds of crazy is going down behind the scenes, however. The son is coming out as gay, and the daughter is trying to sleep with the father. Meanwhile the parents are falling in love with one another – and potentially this'll all ruin the business relationship they have with one another. A relationship which involves competing for sales, naturally.

The problem is that it's just too tentative and placid an experience. It's helped by Moore's blank-eyed performance, but it's mostly because it's just not cutting enough to be a satire, not warm enough to be a character study and not tragic or moving enough to be a drama. The film hangs in a genre no-man's land, flirting with a direction before subscribing to none.

A wasted opportunity, then. But watch it for Duchovny.

For Your Consideration? Exit Through the Gift Shop

Firstly, sorry for the lack of postage this last week! Life has got in the way, however I'm back in business now, with some Banksy.

Frankly, Exit Through the Gift Shop is the film world's biggest advert since FedEx turned up in every other shot in Robert Zemeckis' Castaway. It's not a documentary about one man trying to unlock the myth of street artist Banksy, it's an advert for at the very least, the countercultural attitude Banksy claims to represent, or, more likely, an advert for Banksy himself.

And subsequently the main thrust of the film is somewhat lost, not to mention dull. It claims to be about Thierry Guetta, a filmmaker turned street artist, who has an obsessive compulsive relationship with the camera, filming every aspect of his life (from making breakfast to having a wee).

He accidentally stumbles upon street artists in his adopted home town of LA and follows them around, claiming he's making a documentary. He's not making a documentary, he just stores the footage in shoeboxes in his spare room. It's only when he hears of Banksy that he decides to put his footage together into a feature.

For me, there are too many celebrity cameos (even if they are in context), too much of a knowing wink and too many moments which don't ring true enough for this to be diverting. Perhaps it's all for real, and I'm just a cynical curmudgeon. And perhaps I was disappointed that there wasn't very much Banksy in it (there really is only a smattering, buried in the middle of the film). But it's not well rounded enough as a documentary to leave me satisfied on any level.

If it gets the Oscar, I'll leave a brown smear on the streets of Oxford.