You People

Lauren London and Jonah Hill are shown in a scene from the movie, "You People." Netflix. Talk about juggling a hot potato ...

“Do you know what he thinks of the Jews?” In short order, more than the kufi goes down in slapstick flames as the parents start comparing slavery to the Holocaust. Mom Fatima (Nia Long) is still easier than Big Daddy Akbar, played by Murphy with an authoritarian rigidity that hardly allows the comedy icon to bring his edgy humor to the party. Ezra’s dad (a loopy David Duchovny), happily owns up to his obsession with Xzibit on “Pimp My Ride.” He meets up with Amira Mohammed (London), a costume designer he mistakes for his Uber driver. “You People” also marks the feature directing debut for “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, who co-wrote the script with Hill. “You People,” now on Netflix, starts off promisingly as just such a comic provocation.

It is one tiny rewrite away from a broad “Naked Gun”-esque parody of comedies that traffic in racial stereotypes and differences. Honestly, most of those ...

The tragic thing about “You People” is that it’s a good idea with a great cast. Late in the film, Amira claims that Shelley sees her like a new toy, and I wish the film had the guts to explore that idea more—how people like Shelley can be fascinated by Black culture but not in a way that ever seeks to understand it. Hill and Barris are constantly throwing in these interesting ideas and skipping away from them to the easy, unfunny joke. Admittedly, the angle here is interesting regarding social commentary in that Shelley plays one of those women who sees Black culture in purely superficial terms. Cut to six months later, when Ezra has decided to marry Amira and so steels himself to ask permission from her parents Akbar ( [Eddie Murphy](/cast-and-crew/eddie-murphy)) and Fatima ( [Nia Long](/cast-and-crew/nia-long)). It’s as if they never listened to any podcasts with racial themes, overwriting the scenes with awkward dialogue that sounds so scripted (when the whole idea is that these podcasts are casual, off-the-cuff conversations).

"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.

The Jonah Hill-Eddie Murphy comedy features a Kanye West song and some off-color Holocaust jokes.

As a Jew himself, he said it was also important to him that the film’s depiction of Judaism be “authentic.” [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. “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. Jewish museum.) He also hired an on-set Jewish cultural consultant from Hebrew Helpers, a nationwide Jewish studies tutoring service. [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. (The film’s premiere on Netflix on Friday coincides with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.) 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.” … People grow to understand each other.

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.

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.

Eddie Murphy, Kenya Barris, Nia Long, David Duchovny and Julia Louis-Dreyfus talk bringing difficult topics to the surface in film.

Roosevelt native funnyman Eddie Murphy is starring opposite Jonah Hill in the new Netflix film You People, a culture clash that started streaming on Friday.

The tag line is “opposites attract, families don’t.” It costars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Ezra’s mother Shelley, David Duchovny as Ezra’s father Arnold, and Nia Long as Amira’s mother Fatima. “You can try.”

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.

(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.”

Ezra (Jonah Hill) is a podcast host and financial broker. Amira (Lauren London) is a costume designer who's recently split from her boyfriend. When th...

Put them in a room together and the sparks fly as often as they can, but ultimately, 'You People' tells the same joke over and over and over and over until you're just sick and tired of it. An extended sequence for the bachelor party just goes on long past it being funny, even though it becomes a crucial part of the story. With an embarrassment of comedic riches in its cast, 'You People' shrivels them all down to just flattened tropes with little or no depth or substance to any of it. David Duchovny gives a chuckle or two, particularly when he croons and tinkles out a crap cover of John Legend's 'Ordinary People'. There's so much to mine for material, but something like 'You People' somehow manages to take all of its positives and somehow turn them into negatives. [Jonah Hill](https://entertainment.ie/movie-news/due-to-anxiety-jonah-hill-will-not-do-promotion-for-his-latest-film-537583/)) is a podcast host and financial broker.

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.

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.