Certificate: 15 (strong language, sex references, drug misuse). Running Time: 117 mins. UK Distributor: Netflix
WHO’S IN IT?
Jonah Hill, Lauren London, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mike Epps, Molly Gordon, Nia Long, Deon Cole, Rhea Perlman, David Duchovny, Andrew Schulz, Travis Bennett, Andrea Savage, La La Anthony, Sam Jay, Emily Arlook, Jordan Firstman, Bryan Greenberg, Anthony Payton, Yung Miami
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Kenya Barris (director, writer, producer), Jonah Hill (writer, producer), Kevin Misher (producer), Bekon (composer), Mark Doering-Powell (cinematographer), Jamie Nelsen (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A young couple (Hill and London) must unite their different families when they decide to get married…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON YOU PEOPLE?
When Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner came out in 1967, shortly after laws targeting interracial marriage were struck down, not only was it a major hit with critics, audiences, and awards voters, but it was widely respected for discussing the topic at hand through a comedic, but thoroughly intelligent, lens which turned it into the benchmark for movies tackling the same subject. More than fifty years later, though, few movies have reached or even exceeded that benchmark, because the concept of interracial relationships is somehow still an awkward subject to bring up, especially as race relations in general do not seem to have evolved that much since 1967, despite the very best intentions of films like Get Out (to date, perhaps the closest we’ve yet come to a spiritual successor to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) to call out thinly-veiled prejudice in modern society.
The latest film to try and make sense of it all, through a comedic lens that worked so well for Kramer back in 1967, is director and co-writer Kenya Barris’s You People, which also puts interracial love in the crosshairs. The thing is, though, whereas Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was a very smartly written and performed movie that tackled its subject matter with dignity and respect, You People is a rambling and disappointingly thin mess that says nothing that we as a society should already know by now.
You People concerns Ezra (Jonah Hill, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Barris), a white Jewish podcaster, who begins a relationship with Amira (Lauren London), a Black costume designer from a Muslim family. After six months of dating, Ezra and Amira plan to get married – but the only thing coming in their way is their respective families, who are clearly not on the same page as they are when it comes to seeing past their skin colour. On Ezra’s side, his parents Shelley and Arnold (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny) try too hard to compensate for their glaring lack of understanding surrounding Black culture, while Amira’s mother Fatima (Nia Long) and especially her father Akbar (Eddie Murphy) take an instant disliking to Ezra and his whiteness. Naturally, both families end up making things intensely awkward for the couple, so much so that they begin to reconsider their relationship amidst the uncomfortable racial tension.
It isn’t as though the movie has frighteningly little ammunition to fire with, because modern-day racial tensions, particularly within faux-progressive liberal communities and overly militant types within Black culture, can absolutely be something that any smart writer and director can turn into a fresh satirical target (again, just look at what Jordan Peele did with the former in Get Out). Unfortunately, Kenya Barris is no Jordan Peele, especially when it comes to maintaining the tricky balance between sharp social commentary and genuine entertainment, for both he and co-writer Hill pad out their one-note comedy with contrived scenarios that you’d expect to find in Barris’s hit sitcom Black-ish, wherein their extremely talented comedic performers are left to aimlessly improvise their way out of one painfully awkward moment after another. The intended commentary is watered down significantly as a direct result, because rather than engaging with the subject matter in a way that audiences can thoughtfully digest, Barris and Hill simply use it as a springboard for a collection of deeply uncomfortable situations that aren’t that much different from the tamest family comedy on primetime television right now.
Crucially, You People is also nowhere near as funny as it desires itself to be, which makes the attempt at satire even flatter and more unearned. This is one of those modern-day comedies where scenes will consist of two or more actors seemingly improvising back and forth with one another, throwing in pop culture references that already date this movie even as I’m typing this review, and taking several minutes before eventually reaching the point. There are times in other movies where that “line-o-rama” approach to comedy has worked – until recently, Judd Apatow has found great success with this method – but there is a careful art to it, and just like it does here it can make the film feel so much longer, because not only is the comedy itself generating precious few laughs, but the actors are also equally stranded by direction that won’t allow them to be funny on their own terms. Eddie Murphy, in particular, is a lot more deadpan than you’re perhaps used to seeing him in movies, and while he is perhaps one of the very few comedic performers here who actually does come close to providing some much-needed laughs, he is stuck playing the kind of sternly disapproving parent character that you’ve seen written so much better and funnier in other movies.
The lack of laughs and infrequent consistency with its own messages makes You People feel rather hollow, especially as it rushes through a painfully contrived third act that plays into every stale rom-com convention that it can manage within whatever runtime it has left. There is a lot of potential that is sadly squandered here, in a script that often opts for easy jokes about racial division rather than take any real time to discuss or us them in a much cleverer context, and wastes an unhealthy amount of comedic talent on material that could have been a lot smarter and more provocative than it actually is. As always, it’s great to see comedy legends like Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus interacting with one another, and individually they’re just a lot of fun to watch, but the very least you could do is to give them stuff to say that’s actually, well, funny.
SO, TO SUM UP…
You People is a disappointing attempt to update the racial themes and targets introduced in the classic movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, but director and co-writer Kenya Barris ends up wasting the potential – along with an embarrassing amount of genuinely talented comedic performers, including Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus – on a script that contains precious few laughs and a watered-down commentary on modern-day race relations.
