Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016) is an American action comedy directed by Greg Mottola, starring Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher as Jeff and Karen Gaffney, an ordinary suburban couple whose quiet neighbourhood is disrupted by the arrival of their impossibly stylish new neighbours, Tim and Natalie Jones, played by Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot. The Gaffneys soon discover that the Joneses are not the perfect travel-writing and lifestyle couple they appear to be, but undercover government agents involved in an international espionage operation. The film combines suburban domestic comedy with spy-movie action, using the contrast between everyday cul-de-sac life and glamorous secret-agent chaos as its main comic engine.
Keeping Up with the Joneses was filmed mainly in Georgia, with the Atlanta area standing in for the film’s idealised American suburbia and its larger spy-world locations. The Gaffney and Jones houses were filmed in the real Dupont Commons neighbourhood in West Atlanta, especially around Duncan Drive NW, giving the film its central picture-perfect cul-de-sac setting. The Hyatt Regency Atlanta was used as the Odyssey Hotel, while Red Brick Brewing Company on Defoor Hills Road appeared as the homebrew shop and tasting bar What Ales Ya?. Underground Atlanta was also used, along with other Atlanta and Decatur locations. The film also includes material outside Georgia, including Paraclete XP Indoor Skydiving in Raeford, North Carolina. Rather than relying on famous landmarks, the production builds much of its location identity around polished suburbia, hotel interiors, breweries, office-style spaces and action-comedy set pieces, turning the calm surface of an Atlanta neighbourhood into the centre of an espionage story.
Hyatt Regency Atlanta
Hyatt Regency Atlanta has been used in several films, it appears in Sharky’s Machine, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, Keeping Up with the Joneses and Blockers.
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