Year of Release: 2023
Director: Kenya Barris
Starring: Jonah Hill, Lauren London, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Sam Jay, Nia Long, Travis Bennett, David Duchovny, Molly Gordon, Deon Cole, Andrea Savage, Elliott Gould, Rhea Perlman, Mike Epps, La La Anthony, Yung Miami
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 1
Watch it on Netflix
Synopsis and Review
Kenya Barris has made a name for himself as a writer of a series of TV shows and a few films, including "Black-ish" and also Tim Story's "Shaft", Robert Zemeckis' "The Witches" and Malcolm D. Lee's "Girl Trip". "You People" is his feature directorial debut, and it's a script of his own authorship, in partnership with Jonah Hill. The narrative focuses on the story of Ezra and Amira. They both live in Los Angeles. Ezra is a broker who also has a podcast that he does with his best friend Mo. Amira on the other hand is a Fashion/Costume Designer who has recently gone through a breakup and is looking to restart her life. They accidentally meet when Ezra mistakes her for an Uber driver, but they start a relationship nonetheless. Things go so well, that they eventually move in together. However, as Ezra meets Amira's parents, and Amira meets Ezra's parents, all sorts of friction start appearing, with religion and ethnic background playing a huge role in the cringeworthy situations that arise. Ezra decides to propose to Amira, who enthusiastically responds yes. However as they navigate the engagement period, which includes bachelor/bachelorette parties, the relationships with their families just keep getting worse and worse, causing the relationship between Ezra and Amira to also suffer considerably.
"You People" is a film that tries to elicit comedy both from awkward situations caused by someone's deep rooted prejudices, and also simultaneously tries to capture comedy from clichés associated with families and how "different", "quirky" and "weird" they all are. Sadly during the entire duration of this film, and save for the Uber bit that appears pretty early on, I was unable to find anything particularly funny or insightful about this film. The film tries very hard to find the comedy in pre-conceived ideas of race and religion, but sadly seems to forget that in order for comedy to occur, the characters have to be fairly represented and described as more than just one single aspect that they're categorized as. Case in point, David Duchovny who is always a solid performer in all the projects he's in, in this film has a slight role as Jonah Hills father, and he's essentially asked to play the somewhat lovable and ditzy older gentleman. On the opposite side of the spectrum is of course Eddie Murphy, who for all his versatility and undeniable superlative talent, gets to play the persistently angry version of what a father is, without ever changing his tune. While playing with clichés is a quick way to get laughs, most of the characters in this feature are a much worse version of what Stanley Kramer did with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" in the 1960s. It's a film that tries to make some epiphanies magically occur, in the spirit of the traditional rom-com, but it's difficult to care much for any of these realizations when all these characters are so poorly drawn. Jonah Hill sadly doesn't get to stretch much of his talent, the same going for the talented supporting cast (why is Rhea Perlman in this film if you don't give her anything to do?). It's a misconceived and unfunny film, and ultimately a waste of talent.
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