You People

"You People" relies on cringe-inducing moments as the crux of its comedy, as a Jewish guy and a Black Muslim woman (neither of them particularly observant) ...

Ultimately, though, the performances feel mostly squandered as “You People” yields less than the sum of its parts, not helped by unconvincing plot conveniences down the stretch. Virginia” decision](https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/03/us/interracial-marriage-blake-cec/index.html) and the release of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” – or settle for broad sitcom-style gags. That tension was also evident in Barris’ previous series for Netflix, [“#blackAF,”](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/entertainment/blackaf-review/index.html) in which he also starred. There are also pointed observations about race relations even among those who want to be viewed as progressive, such as Shelley treating her future daughter-in-law like a fashionable accessory to be shown off. Yet the story unfolds in fits and starts, jumping forward to get to the most fertile comedic territory while montage-ing its way through the central relationship after its meet-cute origins. A topnotch cast – down to the tiny cameos – can’t fully redeem material that gets lost somewhere between satire and sitcom as assembled by star Jonah Hill and director Kenya Barris.

Even with an indecisive vision, comedy royalty (Jonah Hill! Eddie Murphy! Julia Louis-Dreyfus!) eke out a laugh or two in Kenya Barris's film.

And even with all of the timely jokes about vaccines and Kanye West, the film only manages to rehash old arguments and then throw them away for a sense of family it hasn’t earned — a shoehorned solution that makes the film feel less like a modern take and more like the same old race movie with a new pair of Air Jordans. [Eddie Murphy](https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/eddie-murphy-speaks-the-rolling-stone-interview-111885/) lands plenty of lines that soften the antagonistic aspects of his character, and [Julia Louis-Dreyfus](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/julia-louis-dreyfus-on-post-election-veep-and-why-we-still-love-elaine-benes-194422/) practically steals the entire damn thing as Ezra’s well-intentioned and overbearing Jewish mother Shelley Cohen. Any chemistry the two have in scenes, and there is some chemistry, often wanes under the collective incompatibility of their families. When Ezra accidentally mistakes Amira Mohammed’s ( [Lauren London](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/lauren-london/)) car for his ride share, the two set upon a whirlwind romance full of differences that threaten to tear their relationship apart. The central meet-cute is playful and awkward in a way that veers closer to endearing than cringe-worthy. [You People](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/netlfix-kenya-barris-you-people-trailer-1234641450/), the feature directorial debut of [Kenya Barris](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/kenya-barris/) (black-ish), is the next great romantic comedy.

Even with a fantastic comedic cast, You People feels more like a series of sketches than an actual film.

But instead, You People is a missed opportunity, a half-assed reinterpretation that is only sporadically funny, and without the heart or the substance that this story would need for it to truly work. At times, it really feels like You People is just Barris throwing out all the scenarios one should expect in this type of film, never quite worrying about how long or how short of a time he spends in these moments, but instead, just focusing on spending any time in them. As it stands, You People is like an amalgamation of sketches with unusual timing, thrown together in an attempt to have some semblance of a coherent narrative. Yet You People lacks any of the insight or cleverness that made black-ish such a gem, instead feeling like a stitched-together collection of scenarios without much in the way of heart or humor. This begins the awkward clashing of worlds between the Cohen and Mohammed family, as Akbar doesn’t think Ezra is good enough for his daughter, while Ezra’s parents Shelley (Louis-Dreyfus) and Arnold (Duchovny) don’t know how to act now that their family is about to become more diverse. For eight seasons, Barris’s show was able to tackle difficult topics like police brutality, the 2016 presidential election, and racism within the span of a little over twenty minutes delicately and with insight.

From Black-ish creator Kenya Barris, Netflix's Eddie Murphy/Jonah Hill team-up is a dispiriting and dull use of tremendous comedic talent that includes Veep ...

All of this is a shame, because even if the movie is barely directed, it is stacked with comedic legends, some of whom can actually get good laughs out of Hill’s signature mumblecore bullshitting. In this mode, You People comes across as both insincere as a whole, and disingenuous when it comes to Ezra’s character. It’s fun when the actor is a supporting character, less so when he’s one of the protagonists. There can be catharsis in making fun of this in conversation or art, and it can even be a channel for growth and moving past said difficulties — which is where the appeal of a movie like Regardless of how well-meaning a person can be, any challenge to their baseline assumptions about life and the world is going to be uncomfortable and disorienting, and missteps will be made. In a beat that feels fairly true to life, neither of them fully anticipates how weird their respective families will be about their relationship.

The cast of the movie includes David Duchovny, Deon Cole, Eddie Murphy, Elliott Gould, Jonah Hill, Jordan Firstman, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Drake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CxtK7-XtE0) [Moon River – Frank Ocean](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXiFHDfvn4A) [Dr. Music – Family Underground](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46E6-Rkzsmg) [Where Did The Day Go – Wet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwcRIVPWAjU) [Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe – Barry White](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0I6mhZ5wMw) [Trauma Baby – Malcolm Mays](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKd_qwISbOg) YG](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM9xgHibvzM) [Comfortable – GoGo Morrow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOhueFnoMuY) [The Payback – James Brown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=istJXUJJP0g) [Classic – Meek Mill Feat. Pharrell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtUVQei3nX4) [Smack a Bitch – Rico Nasty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D4happ4TQU) [POPSTAR – DJ Khaled feat. Ludacris, Rick Ross, T-Pain & Snoop Dogg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGXzlRoNtHU) [Tonite – DJ Quik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hykZtBaPKps) [Honest – ROCCO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G6eiuqjghA) [Drop It Likes It’s Hot – Snoop Dogg. Netflix, via their Spotify hub, has also uploaded the “official playlist” for listeners. [Cuss Words – Too $hort](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqsOdwQgjVQ) [All I Do Is Win – DJ Khaled feat. Swizz Beatz & Jeremih](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpOSrXcPvs0) [Pomegranate – Kota the Friend](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtlS0HttGeU) [Stay High – Brittany Howard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfizQsGWOxI) [Best Part – Daniel Caesar ft. Lil Wayne](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBmipUOg1Qw) [Last Time That I Checc’d – Nipsey Hussle feat. H.E.R.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBy7FaapGRo) [6 ‘N The Mornin’ – Ice-T](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izuMg1GGnMc) [Free Your Mind – Amnesty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYKw1WdLsEY) Look no further if you’re looking for the full list of songs featured in Netflix’s You People. [Chitty Bang – Leikeli47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfcajB7UL3E) [Magic – Vince Staples, Mustard](https://youtu.be/7TtV-f_m6Qg) [Fousheé – gold fronts ft.

The director, co-writer, and co-producer's culture clash romantic comedy is also a love letter to LA.

It shows the hood, it shows Brentwood, and it shows Hollywood, and so on. I learned so much, and that was such an opportunity, but it took me a month and a half, maybe two months, to get away from directing and then think about it again because directing is all-consuming. I understand why the comparisons to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Meet the Parents, but it's a wedding movie. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner did not come to my mind until people said it, and I was like, 'Oh, I get it.' The rules are so reversed. Barris: Jonah and I wanted to do a love letter to LA. I got to see 1,200 people at the premiere, and it played like I wanted to play. I felt well prepared for that part of it because of the years of production, and it helped me not get treated like a first-time director. When you go into it with the idea that you're making a theatrical movie, and it's not that, it affects how you approach it. If I were to make another streaming movie, I would go into it with the notion that I was making this for streaming. The part I wasn't prepared for was that with movies, a lot of it is about talent management. I think moving forward, that would be something I would want to lean in on, those relationships and things that I've made in the past years, to make people feel comfortable that you're going to try to take care of them and do your best. Kenya Barris: I've been asked to do one a bunch of times, but I knew whatever it was that I directed, I definitely wanted to write.

But doesn't this story sound redundantly similar to previous Barris works? That's what many believed once Netflix dropped the trailer, which sparked controversy ...

Holmes Officially Out at ABC News Following Reveal of Affair](https://www.tvinsider.com/1079110/t-j-holmes-amy-robach-gma3-exit-good-morning-america/) [5Apple’s Funny-Sad ‘Shrinking,’ Comedy Star Power (Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Lopez) in Streaming Movies, Roots in Residency, Figure Skating on NBC](https://www.tvinsider.com/1078920/shrinking-harrison-ford-shotgun-wedding-eddie-murphy-jennifer-lopez-you-people/) It was also [met with a lukewarm response](https://twitter.com/cursedhive/status/1354916245611671557). [BlackAF](https://www.tvinsider.com/show/blackaf/), [triggered a response](https://twitter.com/MrJeromeTrammel/status/1208477495407915008) from audiences for only reflecting the stories of light-skinned and biracial characters. Although the reasoning behind his casting decisions has been explained in the past and come from an altruistic place, people have continued to hold the creator to task for not exploring the diversity of African Americans as he is continuously given the opportunity to helm projects focused on Black people. [Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner](https://www.tvinsider.com/show/guess-whos-coming-to-dinner/)? In a previous discussion with People, Barris also mentioned the inception of black-ish. Let us know in the poll below. … So I take the good with the bad.” London will play the daughter of dark-skinned parents, Murphy and Long, in You People. You People features Hill as a boyfriend hoping to get the approval of his girlfriend’s (London) parents, played by Long and Murphy. (The movie debuted in limited theaters on January 20, a week before hitting the streamer on January 27.) But more than anything, folks were more disturbed by his frequent use of interracial couples at the center of his projects. Cause at this point, I’m starting to think his ancestors were THE Loving v.

'Black-ish' creator Kenya Barris opens up about his Netflix rom-com 'You People' and why he wanted to make a 'love letter' to L.A. culture.

They were enjoying each other, and they were bonding, but I needed to get to the scene, and no one was really listening to me. I think the difference between TV actors and people doing a movie is that TV actors are, like, going to the rock quarry. I also love that we got to put this movie out at a time when it's so prescient in the conversation right now. I was like, "This is not supposed to happen." They want to know how big their trailer's going to be, and they want to do this or they want to do that. It's a really interesting geographic setup for the city, and those are the things I think we wanted to show. I was like, "Hold on, what?" So from there, we started getting into our love of L.A., and we decided we really wanted to write a love letter to the culture. He was in a relationship with someone from another culture, and we had a conversation about how, in that situation, it's not usually the [couple] that are the problem. That was something that felt really specific to L.A. But we started really talking because I was such a huge admirer of Mid90s. I was a huge fan of his for forever.

'You People' Furthers 'Black-ish' Creator's Obnoxious Racial Agenda · Kyndall Cunningham · Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Netflix.

The result is that You People is another one of Barris’ flawed think pieces. With Hill and Murphy at the center, You People had the potential to fit in some laughs, even if the overall material is lacking. Simply put, it’s not enough to depict the obvious tensions between Black and white people, which You People does to nauseating effect. Another absurd aspect of the film is how characters react to the idea of co-mingling with other races, despite living in present-day Los Angeles. It’s equally frustrating that Ezra is often positioned as the partner with the most to be concerned about upon entering this union. On the other hand, it’s frustrating that the main antagonist in this film is an ultra-conservative Black man. Rather, his perspective on Black people and the way we currently exist in the world has proven to be, in a word, problematic. More painfully, the film contains the lowest bar of racial comedy, from a scene where Akbar forces Ezra to play basketball with a group of Black men to another where he tries to provoke him into saying the N-word while listening to Jay-Z. The first time he appears on-screen, he’s wearing a black hoodie declaring the obvious sentiment, “Fred Hampton Was Murdered.” He’s a member of the Nation of Islam and a proud supporter of Louis Farrakhan. The prequel to Barris’ hit ABC show [Black-ish](https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-black-ish-has-a-gay-problem), the interracial family-based comedy Mixed-ish, garnered [many of the same complaints](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/10/mixed-ish-thomas-chatterton-williams-race/600679/). Black Twitter, as well as some TV critics, raised a number of objections to the one-season sitcom. Such was the response to his first Netflix venture #blackAF, released at the start of the pandemic.

You People movie review: Unfolding like a rat-a-tat version of Netflix's own Master of None, the new comedy from Kenya Barris and Jonah Hill is largely ...

But despite the younger generation’s attempts to build bridges and allow love to conquer all, the cultural and racial baggage between the two communities, the movie suggests, makes it almost impossible for two people from radically different backgrounds to sustain a relationship in modern-day America. She accuses him of racism, given his inability to tell her apart from the Black driver on his Uber app, but this hits a nerve. Akbar, for instance, can’t shut up about his grandmother who used to pick cotton, and Ezra’s dad, played by He’s instantly wary of Ezra, who appears to be in active rebellion against his Jewish heritage; Hill has retained his bleach-blonde hair and tattoos. Ezra tries to tell Amira that both she and her car match the description of his ride on the app, but she’s having none of it. Together with Hill, he’s crafted a screenplay that, for at least 45 minutes, brings back memories of Judd Apatow’s heyday in all the best ways.

In this totally irrelevant interracial dating comedy (that felt old in 1967), director Kenya Barris continues to fixate on stereotypical notions of ...

The result is that You People is another one of Barris’ flawed think pieces. With Hill and Murphy at the center, You People had the potential to fit in some laughs, even if the overall material is lacking. Simply put, it’s not enough to depict the obvious tensions between Black and white people, which You People does to nauseating effect. Another absurd aspect of the film is how characters react to the idea of co-mingling with other races, despite living in present-day Los Angeles. It’s equally frustrating that Ezra is often positioned as the partner with the most to be concerned about upon entering this union. On the other hand, it’s frustrating that the main antagonist in this film is an ultra-conservative Black man. Rather, his perspective on Black people and the way we currently exist in the world has proven to be, in a word, problematic. More painfully, the film contains the lowest bar of racial comedy, from a scene where Akbar forces Ezra to play basketball with a group of Black men to another where he tries to provoke him into saying the N-word while listening to Jay-Z. The first time he appears on-screen, he’s wearing a black hoodie declaring the obvious sentiment, “Fred Hampton Was Murdered.” He’s a member of the Nation of Islam and a proud supporter of Louis Farrakhan. The prequel to Barris’ hit ABC show [Black-ish](https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-black-ish-has-a-gay-problem), the interracial family-based comedy Mixed-ish, garnered [many of the same complaints](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/10/mixed-ish-thomas-chatterton-williams-race/600679/). Black Twitter, as well as some TV critics, raised a number of objections to the one-season sitcom. Such was the response to his first Netflix venture #blackAF, released at the start of the pandemic.

(JTA) – The new Netflix comedy “You People,” about an uneasy union between a Jewish man and a Black woman in Los Angeles, was always aiming to provoke its ...

[Louis Farrakhan](https://www.jta.org/2018/03/02/united-states/louis-farrakhan-anti-semite-still-relevant), whose antisemitism gets a small acknowledgement, although the wedding at the end of the film is jointly officiated by a cantor and an imam meant to represent the Nation of Islam. As a Jew himself, he said it was also important to him that the film’s depiction of Judaism be “authentic.” “It was important, I think, for us to have that song remain, so that it portrayed the divide that they would have to cross,” Misher said. Detailed discussions of antisemitism, the filmmakers believed, would have distracted from that. But Misher told JTA that he thought the film did an admirable job of portraying a specific “culturally Jewish” Los Angeles family. There are other racially charged moments in the film that may sit uneasily with Jewish viewers. [popular song that includes the N-word in its title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubRUS8GupLU) at two different intervals — first as a joke about Hill’s character being unable to say the title, then at the end under a hora — takes on a heightened meaning today. Jewish museum.) He also hired an on-set Jewish cultural consultant from Hebrew Helpers, a nationwide Jewish studies tutoring service. (The film’s premiere on Netflix on Friday coincides with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.) [prominent Black celebrities](https://www.jta.org/tag/kyrie-irving) who have dabbled in antisemitism. And when they don’t understand each other, they understand that there are, in fact, differences.” “It wasn’t about the artist of the song, it was about the words in the song.”

“To be able to discover this character across from somebody as talented as Jonah Hill was the dream come true,” Jay tells Complex. “I'm a big Jonah Hill fan, a ...

I’m in this place in life where I’m just super open to what’s next, and excited about the limitlessness of the possibilities. You said you don’t want to be boxed in as just a comedian and you brought up Marvel. I hate to say that in such a cliché way, but it’s the job of any artist to comment on what’s going on in society and bring a microscope to some of what is happening. Sometimes things happen in this business and you can’t really believe they’re happening to you and you’re just like, “Is this for real?” You got to take the little kid in you down a notch when you walk into the space. “The more I learn and grow, the more I’m like, ‘I’m an artist and I like to create things and I just want to be able to create things for as long as possible.’” Do you think it’s important for a comedy to cover these sorts of topics and conversations? But I also am a woman and I have a nurturing side of me that just is natural. Yeah, I think I am that to a lot of my homeboys. I read this stuff and I was like, “This stuff feels solid.” Especially the relationship between Mo and Ezra. But Barris was right, Jay is a pleasant addition to the story and more than holds her own in the film among the greats. Working in television is much different than making a film, especially for someone like the comedian who is used to being involved in behind-the-scenes processes like writing and producing. “I’m a big Jonah Hill fan, a real fan, so I definitely was fangirling a little bit during the breaks.

Kenya Barris' Netflix comedy film "You People" revolves around the struggles of an interracial couple. It is essentially a two-hour-long commentary on ...

While they had gone their separate ways owing to the differences between their families, it was their families who realized that their kids did not make a mistake by choosing one another; it was they who never tried to understand Ezra and Amira’s relationship with an open mind. They apologized for their behavior and for being a disappointment to their children. While the couple seemed to lack agency, considering how they were easily manipulated by their families, the film ends on a hopeful note for their future. Ezra expressed his disappointment when Amira asked him the reason why he decided to meet her parents out of the blue. While he hoped he would film a humiliating video of Ezra failing at the sport, instead, Ezra proved him wrong and excelled at it. Ezra went on a drive with Akbar, and he intentionally took him to a Black salon to show how they would never fit together. Amira was quite taken when she realized that Ezra wanted her parents’ approval before proposing to her. He was not the Black Muslim man Akbar had dreamed his daughter would bring home, and he found it difficult to accept her decision. Before proposing to Amira, Ezra wanted the approval of her parents. Akbar was repulsed by the idea of the man Amira wanted to be with. During their conversation, Ezra mentioned how he wanted to propose to Amira for marriage. Ezra introduced Amira to his parents, and it did not go as smoothly as he would have preferred.