The Oranges

New Jersey’s lot in the movies has long been that of a polyester-clad stooge: when it’s not serving as the butt of jokes from its cooler New York neighbours, it’s the setting of even smarmier stories about the perils of suburbia. And they don’t come much more lazily condescending than British director Julian Farino’s laughless farce. Here, war is declared between two close-knit households when the paterfamilias of one (Hugh Laurie) takes up with the college-age daughter (Leighton Meester) of the other, despite a clear lack of sexual connection between the pair. It’s the immaculate conception of movie extramarital affairs. But then ‘The Oranges’ would have you believe that no one in the suburbs has sex, or feelings, or even believable jobs: Laurie’s wife (Catherine Keener) runs a year-round Christmas carolling troupe, while Meester’s mother (Allison Janney) devotes every waking thought to marrying off her daughter. That may sound misogynistic, but at least our understandably sleepy-sounding narrator (Alia Shawkat) holds everyone in equal contempt. The intervention of Tony Soprano, who lives not far away, is urgently called for.