Whoever is managing Jon Hamm and his role-choices is sinking his career like a stone.Jon Hamm’s career — TVLand sitcoms or one-off guest spots in perpetuity, by this time next year– RIP
With an estimated production cost of $40M before P&A, 20th Century Fox’s Keeping Up With the Joneses may not go down as the biggest box office disaster of all-time, but the film is a disaster nonetheless with an estimated opening of $6M this weekend, perhaps even lower.
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Joneses’ fail is different, largely the result of mismatched stars, an indie comedy director, and big producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald aboard an attempted broad comedy
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On the surface, many rivals believe that 20th Century Fox bailed on Joneses. Fox moved the comedy off its April 1 release date –where it was the only studio wide release– and relocated it to one of the most competitive frames on the calendar against three other wide entries, including a Tom Cruise film, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. However, the release date change stemmed from Fox sending Joneses back for reshoots. And sources tell us that if Fox truly didn’t care about the fate of Joneses, they would have never sent the film back into production.
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Joneses is just a situation of an ineptly paired comedy with co-stars. Gadot is known more for being Wonder Woman than a wiseneheimer. And Emmy-winning Mad Men Jon Hamm hasn’t found that script yet which will break him out as a feature film star; his last effort Disney’s Million Dollar Arm bit the dust at the domestic B.O. with $36.5M. TV Academy voters take Hamm seriously for his funny bone lauding him for guest turns on 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but movie ticket buyers aren’t lining up yet. According to CinemaScore, slightly more moviegoers cited Galifianakis and co-stars Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis as the reason why they bought tickets to Masterminds (37%) then the Hangover star’s attachment with Hamm (28%). Those who braved watching both comedies gave the leading actors a B.
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http://deadline.com/2016/10/keeping-up-with-the-joneses-zach-galifianakis-jon-hamm-gal-gadot-
Even if you replaced the entire cast of Keeping Up With The Joneses, no amount of chemistry in the world would make up for the movie’s script, though the actors try admirably, if futilely, to revive the material.
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There’s no denying that Hamm is game for comedy... but is he actually funny?
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For Hamm, there is the benefit of working alongside some of Hollywood’s finest and most respected comedians, and for the shows themselves, Hamm’s star power and considerable chops as an actOR add a touch of class to the proceedings. Hiring Jon Hamm to show up at a late hour to storm the kitchens and make an alliance with a talking can is a joke that requires little set-up. So long as the writing for Hamm acknowledges the anachronism of his presence, the audience will laugh because they’re watching one of the most respected actors in television act the fool.
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Celebrity guests were common on 30 Rock, but if some stars like Oprah were able to get laughs based on how they actually performed their cameos, Hamm’s laughs are entirely based on the debasement of his persona. Comedy is often based on people embarrassing themselves — see the million and one tumbles taken in Keeping Up With The Joneses. But the problem with Hamm is that he doesn’t display enough skill as a comedian to make a joke appear as more than a signpost upon which there can only be read the simple message, “This Is A Joke.” His line delivery retains the neutral quality it had when he was playing a psychologically tortured pathological liar, and his movements are just as subtle... until he is asked to perform physical comedy, which he approaches with a kind of Promethean awkwardness that’s not uninteresting, but that’s also, unfortunately, not funny either.
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With Jon Hamm, especially after years of watching him in as iconic a role as Don Draper, it is uncomfortably clear that his gifts for dramatic subtlety are ill-suited to the demands of the broad comedy that he often pursues, and the result is that instead of laughing at the way he moves his body or the way he delivers a line, there is nothing to notice except that there is laugh too low, no scenario too ridiculous, no spy movie too terrible for Jon Hamm not to give it his all. It’s one thing to make jokes about humiliation; it’s another to actually commit to comedy as an act of self-debasement.
Looking back at those initial SNL appearances, there’s no denying Hamm has the potential to be funny. Certainly no one could fault him for a lack of trying, and his taste in projects is impeccable — even Keeping Up With The Joneses was boasting Superbad’s Greg Mottola in the director’s chair. But if Hamm sincerely wants to make the jump from Sunday night prestige dramas to Saturday afternoon comedy matinees, it’s time he pushed himself to tell a joke where the punch line is more than just “Jon Hamm.”http://www.mtv.com/news/2947246/is-jon-hamm-funny/
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