'You People' Review: Kenya Barris and Jonah Hill's Modern 'Meet the Parents' Riff Arrives Outdated
You People
R: Language throughout, some sexual material, and drug content
Runtime: 1 Hour and 58 Minutes
Production Companies: Khalabo Ink Society, Strong Baby, Misher Films
Distributor: Netflix
Director: Kenya Barris
Writers: Kenya Barris, Jonah Hill
Cast: Jonah Hill, Lauren London, David Duchovny, Nia Long, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Eddie Murphy
Release Date: January 27, 2022
In Theaters & Netflix
I got four well-earned belly laughs from this film, mostly from Jonah Hill. He operates on a stressed, deadpanned energy, giving Bob Belcher as if he was a millennial sneakerhead reacting to all the wacky racism surrounding him.
Kenya Barris has been one of the most prominent Black creative voices within Hollywood for a long time. After co-writing two damn good films, Barbershop: The Next Cut and Girls Trip, the Black-ish creator’s work entered a downward spiral when let loose from the training wheels of co-writer Tracy Oliver. Anything Barris contributed to, including Shaft (2019) and his Netflix series BlackAF, often added a new stress line on my forehead. This stems from his reliance on Black stereotypes masked as comedic cultural commentary. A new stress line emerged when Barris announced his directorial debut, You People—his take on the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner/Meet the Parents formula. An LA-based Jew and Black-Muslim family butting heads? What could possibly go wrong?
Ezra Cohen (co-writer Jonah Hill), a Jewish 35-year-old finance bro pursuing a cultural podcasting career with his best friend Mo (Sam Jay) has a hard time meeting the right girl. His overbearing mother, Shelley (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), wants him to settle down with a nice Jewish girl. A twist of fate occurs when he encounters Amira (Lauren London), a Black costume designer fresh out of a relationship. After stirring up a six-month romance, which is like 20 years in LA time, Ezra is ready to break the glass with her. The problem is he must meet her stern Muslim no-nonsense father, Akbar Mohammed (Eddie Murphy), and get his blessing, and vice versa for Amira. What follows is a heavy-handed string of race and religious-oriented shenanigans from each family that gets in the way of the couple’s future together.
The Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner formula has been rehashed ample times. During the early 2000s, You People’s cast members Eddie Murphy starred in Shrek 2 and Mike Epps was in Guess Who. One was one of my all-time favorite comedies, the other was a charming product of its time that got by on the charisma of its leads (Ashton Kutcher, Bernie Mac, and Zoe Saldana). It’s baffling that Hill and Barris took that classic formula, gave it an R-rated spin, and made a more juvenile, outdated iteration than the versions that came before it.
Following society’s struggles with police brutality and the anti-semitism within Black celebrities, primarily Kanye West, You People’s comedy lacks subtlety and nuance. Instead, it strictly aims for cheap, offensive race-relation jokes for shock value. It makes a mockery of heavy-handed topics to make your boomer uncle (who’s still sharing offensive memes on Facebook) laugh. The movie ONLY operates on lewd, shock value humor that says, “What's this white person or Black person doing here?” You’d think it takes place in the midwest and not a diverse setting like LA in the 2020s when interracial relationships are common.
An essential ingredient to making this formula function is making the romantic chemistry between the couple convincing enough for the lead to fight for his love’s hand. You People fails entirely in that regard. I don’t know whether it’s the film’s LA setting where romances come and go like the wind, or if it’s the actors, but Hill and London’s chemistry is weak. London’s Amira is a severely underwritten character. She has little personality outside of “woke millennial Black woman,” used as a reaction device to Shelley’s overt tone-deafness. Ezra is given more agency due to Hill's contributions to the script. That said, his constant awkward dialogue—acting more like a classic Jason Biggs archetype than a grown adult—adds frustration to his character and the film's overall humor.
Murphy’s Akbar is a Louis Farrakhan-supporting anti-vaxxer. If you don't know who Farrakhan is, Google him and then ask yourself if you're supposed to laugh at this character. Akbar gives Ezra grief solely because of his white background and takes it upon himself to make him uncomfortable at every turn. At one point he takes Ezra to a crip Barbershop while the latter is wearing a red hoodie. Shelley is enthusiastic about having a Black daughter-in-law, perceiving her as a Bratz doll to play with and show off. She does this while spouting very offensive microaggressions. Think of the parents of Get Out but overbearingly racist before the brain-switching twist. Louis-Dreyfus pours her charisma into the worst white Jewish mom you’ll ever meet while Murphy is going through the motions. He’s stern and reactionary, making lewd comments with zero joy as if he’s simply there to collect a check.
Nia Long and David Duchovny, who portray Akbar and Shelley’s respective spouses, sit on the sidelines with one insensitive joke in their back pocket to top them off. Other supporting actors, like Mike Epps, Molly Gordon, and Sam Jay barely have the screen time to make a lasting impression.
When the film traverses into Meet the Parents territory, neither of the dynamics (Shelley/Amira, Akbar/Ezra) make any progress to give the film any charm. It’s just vulgarity for nearly two hours until it remembers to apply the inevitable falling out for the couple. As predictable as the film is, it's devoid of any common ground or understanding, especially with the bigoted parents shaking their hands and apologizing to one another. It treats the conflict like an ending of Barney the Dinosaur, with a moral coat of: “Well, not all [insert race] people are bad.”
Kenya Barris’ You People is another step back for his dwindling quality as a creative. Wasting the talents of Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and co-writer Jonah Hill, this familiar reskin of a timely comedy is transformed into an unfunny and offensive exercise of oppression Olympics that only appeals to the Black people of Barris’ generation.
I had to get some walking distance from the Netflix-owned Paris Theater to let out a cathartic yell of pain. If you want to watch a great version of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner/Meet the Parents that features Eddie Murphy, JUST WATCH SHREK 2.
