YOU PEOPLE. There is a cathartic release that comes with watching terrifying movies. The adrenaline, the comforting resolution, the jump scare at the end that allows us to laugh at ourselves a little. Even the lingering dread as you turn the bathroom light on later to brush your teeth is a small, morbid thrill if you dare glance up at the mirror. I’m into it. I will dive headlong into the sensation of goosebumps and outright fear when a movie is immersive enough. But for cringe — the whole-body, second-hand shame of watching fictional people flail and offend through delicate moments — I am a lightweight. You People, written by Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris, who also directed, is out of my league. Curiosity (rubbernecking?) and the coaxing of my cringe-chasing daughter won out but had I known Barris was behind the movie, I’d have been an easier mark.
Barris’ dialogue and humor show up in Black-ish (2014) and Girls Trip (2017), the latter being an underrated, raunchy and raucous ensemble starring Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall and Tiffany Haddish, all of whom perform at the top of their game. Here, Barris and Hill are writing for something of a comic dream team, including Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis Dreyfuss and Hill. The peril of a romantic comedy, especially one about a white Jewish man and a Black Muslim woman with clashing in-laws, is that some of the cringe isn’t intentional. Whether you can hold on through all the flavors of embarrassment for the sake of some very funny scenes is another story.
Ezra Cohen (Hill), a Jewish stockbroker/sneaker head in Los Angeles who hates his job and is at the height of maternal pressure to find a nice girl, only seems comfortable in front of a microphone recording a podcast with his best friend Mo (a fantastic Sam Jay). The two talk music, sports and pop culture, specifically Black culture. Ezra mistakes costume designer/stylist Amira’s (Lauren London) car for his Uber ride, and they shift from understandably hostile to meet-cute. The date montage rolls into cohabitation and eventually to meeting the parents. On Ezra’s side of the aisle, that means his overbearing, zero-filter mother Shelley (Louis-Dreyfus), almost equally awkward and awed sister Liza (Molly Gordon), and goofy, clueless father Arnold (David Duchovny). After the initial car-crash introductions, Shelley’s eager welcome of Amira shifts from wildly ham-fisted attempts at proving how accepting the white family is of Black people (*reviewer stops briefly to breathe into paper bag) to fetishizing Amira and treating her like a trophy for allyship. Ezra’s first meeting with Amira’s pious parents Akbar (Eddie Murphy) and Fatima (Nia Long) to gain their blessing before proposing to Amira is a spectacular failure from the choice of lunch at Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘n’ Waffles to his rambling tangent on sex with their daughter (*reviewer stops briefly again to eat paper bag). Akbar, whose politics and religion make Ezra an unacceptable choice for his daughter, isn’t won over by Ezra’s frantic overtures. Getting both sets of parents together for a meal ends in flames both literal and figurative, and doesn’t bode well for wedding planning or the respective bachelor and bachelorette weekends. Can these two crazy kids work it out?
There is much to laugh at and with in You People, with some of the best zingers delivered between those closest, with endless in-group ribbing between Ezra and Mo, the Cohens and Akbar’s family. Louis-Dreyfus is diabolically believable as Shelley, at once forceful and brittle, pushing and prodding, when all social cues are flashing red. It’s strange to see Murphy mostly playing straight man, though his downward stare is effective and he eats up the few truly funny lines he gets. Long is a bit underused, and Amira seems unable to do wrong, aside from maybe deferring too easily to her father, which doesn’t allow her to do as much as she might have. Jay (who gets the wisest moment in the film) and Mike Epps (basically King Lear‘s fool) steal scenes effortlessly, as does Deon Cole, as a cousin and aspiring event planner.
There are weird holes, like the total lack of interaction between the couple’s respective friend groups, and moments where a bigger risk might have been taken to really dig into racism, antisemitism and the personal issues between characters rather than simply tossing them onto a growing pile that needs to be built and pushed aside in two hours. But there’s a genuine sweetness to the blossoming romance — definitely more than I thought possible when one of them has Justin Timberlake highlights from 1999. And while the resolution feels rushed and easy, there’s pleasure in watching some seasoned pros work scene by scene. But you might want a paper bag just in case. R. 117M. NETFLIX.
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 320, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Instagram @JFumikoCahill and on Mastodon @jenniferfumikocahill.
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This article appears in Wild 2.0.
