Film Review: You People (Netflix)

 

 Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

This movie is such a waste.  Eddie Murphy is a comedy legend and Jonah Hill can be very funny.  Add Julia Louis-Dreyfus and this should be comedy gold.

Instead we get a boring, preachy, pod-casty movie.

You People is about Ezra (Hill).  He is a broker but a wannabe podcaster.  The fact that the movie opens with Hill and his partner Mo (Sam Jay) doing a podcast should set up the feel for the whole movie.

A brief digression about podcasts: their nature is to have the hosts talk, sometimes extemporaneously and often without much of a roadmap other than the main topic.  From there, they often wander about verbally until they hit a nugget of wit and then they keep on that vein until it is dry.  Podcasts fill the space with verbal noise because that is how we experience them: background noise while we are doing other things.

That is how You People feels.  The plot should lead to a tight and funny story.  Instead, the movie wanders and meanders, taking a 20-second gag and stretching it out over 5 minutes.  The movie's run time is an interminable 2 hours, which quickly feels like a drag.

The main plot involves Ezra who is white and Jewish falling in love with Amira (Lauren London), who is black and Muslim.  Their love is set again the culture clash of Ezra's parents Arnold (David Duchovny) and Shelley (Dreyfus) and Amira's parents Akbar (Eddie Murphy) and Fatima (Nia Long).  This should be comedy gold where we can explore the foibles of our different cultures while seeing our common humanity.

Instead, all we get are awkward scenes that drag on beyond the suspension of disbelief.  Don't get me wrong, awkward humor can be done with great effect, but you need a deft hand.  Director Kenya Barris and co-writer Hill do not have that skill.  The relationships never really develop and the movie seems to be spinning its wheels with one unfunny joke after another.

It also is very strange to me that so much focus falls on the differences in religion and yet neither of the young lovers is particularly religious, nor do they seem interested in following their religion's commandments on sexuality.

I couldn't escape the feeling that this film is a microcosm of how people from Los Angeles see the world.  Everything feels so filled with tension and strife.  An interracial relationship is scene as some kind of political or cultural statement.  As the child of an interracial marriage, this has never been my experience.  Outside of Los Angeles, this doesn't seem to be a big deal.  (I read another reviewer who happened to make this same point, so I don't think I'm far off on this).  Even the title seems sharp and accusatory.

If the filmmakers were willing to be brutal to their own movie and cut about 40 minutes out of it, you may have something worth watching. Hill and London have decent chemistry

Murphy has some good parts and so does Dreyfuss, but that cannot keep this ship from sinking under its own weight.  I think Barriss and Hill thought that what they had was so funny or important, that it all had to stay.

But it not something worth your time.