You People Review

Photo Credit - Netflix

Black-ish and Grown-ish creator Kenya Barris is a generationally talented screenwriter, but his work has trended down as of late. His series, BlackAF, and Cheaper By the Dozen remake received far more jeers than cheers, but then there was the shit show that was Coming 2 America. None matched the excellence anticipated from a 4-time Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series nominee.

After being marked safe from the bad reviews and drying his tears with the money from his 9-figure deals, Barris is back. This time, in his directorial debut and joined by Jonah Hill (on camera and script), Eddie Murphy, and a host of other stars, he takes on race (again) and interracial relationships with You People. You People is the story of Amira (Lauren London) and Ezra (Hill), a Black-Jewish interracial couple who want to take the next step in their relationship but must contend with their respective families and cultures before moving forward. Yep, another update to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Hollywood often revisits the 1967 classic in some form and has yet to yield the original’s impact or quality from it. Yet, if anybody can get this right, it’s the guy who wrote one of the best episodes on TV in the last 20 years.

Does Barris’s version of the interracial love story and its dynamics rise to the occasion and, above all, show the best version of Barris? It’s not groundbreaking, nor is it his Black-ish peak, but You People signals a step in the right direction for Barris’s return to form.

Maybe it’s the comfort of familiar territory in addressing racial, social, and cultural issues. Perhaps it’s having another talented writer in Hill on the script with him. It could be both, but either way, You People is Barris at his best since the early Black-ish days.

In You People, Barris appears to have ditched the low-brow comedy that sunk his most recent efforts. This script returns him to the more refined comedic storytelling style prevalent in his Emmy-nominated work. The jokes are there, but it takes some understanding of the Black and Jewish cultures to get them.

The scene that typifies this is the Louis Farrakhan story scene. It’s gut-busting funny if you know why Farrakhan would present an issue to Ezra’s family. However, if you aren’t familiar with the history of Farrakhan and the Jewish community, it doesn’t land.

Akin to Black-ish, the strength of Barris’s and Hill’s script is the points it makes and how it makes them, which You People emphasizes over comedy in its second half. Previous iterations of this story made the racial dynamics and lessons one-sided, and You People turns that trope on its head and makes the experience a two-way street. It places the burden of dealing with race on both sides of the relationship instead of one person and family, which shaped a tale almost as old as time into something fresh.

On the acting side, it’s Hill’s and London’s movie, and they are good together. That being said, Murphy and fellow SNL alum Julia Louis-Dreyfuss steal all the scenes as Ezra’s mother and Amira’s father, respectively.

Murphy is basically an older version of Martin Lawrence’s Tyler from Boomerang with a wife and kids, and he kills it. It’s a different Murphy than we’re used to seeing because he’s primarily brooding and restrained, but his back-and-forths with Hill and reactions draw out the same laughs as his usual comedic presence.

Louis-Dreyfus is so good at being so bad, and that’s a great thing. She plays the part of being cluelessly offensive perfectly, and her performance sets up the best parts of the film. Besides that, David Duchovny is solid in limited time but falls victim to the aforementioned cultural references falling flat. There are also some standout cameo appearances from a few of Barris’s friends and the Jewish comedy community.

It's still a far cry from his best work, but You People shows that Barris still has that it factor that made Black-ish work so well. He’s at his best when he has something to say, and returning to that is a welcomed approach to a story that will forever be relevant but needed to show some progress.

Ultimately, how much you enjoy You People will depend on what works best for you. If straightforward gags and punchlines are your things, you won’t get much from the film except for a few scenes. Alternatively, if you’re willing to look for something beyond jokes, you find plenty to love and think about in You People.