Movie Review: 'You People' is an Insufferable Bore Intended as Comedy

You People (2023)

Directed by Kenya Barris

Written by Jonah Hill, Kenya Barris

Starring Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis Dreyfuss, Lauren London, Nia Long, David Duchovny

Release Date January 27th, 2023

Published January 28th, 2023

You People is an insufferable bore featuring caricatures of white and black people who talk as if they were programmed by Boomer Facebook memes. Kenya Barris and Jonah Hill are supposed to be better than that but by the evidence of You People, they've taken the lowest hanging fruit of awkward racial humor and blended it all together and reheated it over and over and over again and then called it a movie. The characters may have a point to make about the ways white and black people fail to communicate effectively with each other but it's hard to find that point in the midst of noisy, insufferable characters intended only to inflict themselves on each other rather than talk like human beings.

You People stars Jonah Hill as Ezra Cohen and Lauren London as Amira Mohammad. These two 30-something kids meet-cute when Ezra mistakes Amira for his Uber Driver. She happens to be lost on her way to a new job and he's able to navigate her there. Along the way, he gets her phone number and the two start a sweet romance. He works in finance but dreams of being a podcaster and she's costume designer working on various different movie and television projects. They have terrific chemistry. Only one thing stands in there way, a terrible script, no wait, I mean their parents.

Julia Louis Dreyfuss and David Duchovny are Shelly and Arnold Cohen and Eddie Murphy and Nia Long are Akbar and Fatima Mohammad. If you haven't guessed, the Cohen's are Jewish and the Mohammad's are Muslim, how will they ever get along? Sarcasm. Sarcasm. Sarcasm. Surprise, they don't get along and when Ezra decides to ask Amira to marry him things only get worse as Shelly stumbles into ruining their relationship over her woke enthusiasm, and Akbar actively works to undermine the relationship by catching Ezra doing something wrong, whatever that might be.

From there, You People and co-writer and director Kenya Barris, proceed through presenting a minor variation on the same two jokes, over and over and over and over. There are two jokes in You People. The first is that because Ezra is not Black, Akbar tries to get him to do racist things to prove he's a bad person. This leads to shoving Ezra into a game of basketball against only black players, where he surprisingly excels, ho ho, or taking Ezra to a barber shop where he's wearing a red hooded sweatshirt in a place where they only wear the color blue. It's a gang reference you see. Ugh!

The other 'joke' is that Shelly is trying too hard to be woke. She makes every encounter with Amira as uncomfortable as possible as she tries to prove how not racist she is. It's the scene from Get Out where Bradley Whitford says he'd have voted for Barack Obama a third time if he could of, but ONLY that scene over and over and over and minus the wit. Scenes go on for an eternity as Julia Louis Dreyfuss makes a fool of herself in the most agonizing ways.

No one in You People, aside from Ezra's best friend Mo, played terrifically by Sam Jay, and the occasions when Hill and London are alone together, ever talks like a human being. Every scene strikes the most uncomfortable tone possible and lingers on without ever being funny or varying from the same incessant joke about Ezra being white and his mom being a cringey accidental, incidental racist. There is nothing wrong with making jokes about race in the way You People does but making an entire movie where those jokes repeat incessantly is impossible to endure.

I've seen Eddie Murphy completely checked out in a movie before and I would prefer his boredom to the kind of energy he brings to You People. Murphy appears to be actively hostile toward being in You People. The character is intended to be confrontational and difficult to get along with, but Murphy's performance gives off a distinct vibe that he doesn't want to be in this movie and that he won't give the film any more energy or effort than he absolutely has to. He's not bored by You People, he's actively hostile toward being in the movie that he is in. I think I can relate, it's just not fun to relate to.

There was promise in You People. There is promise in the idea of a modern take on interracial relationships or cross-religious relationships. Sadly, You People squanders that promise by reducing everything to the most basic joke and then repeating that basic joke ad nauseum. Few films are as tiresome as You People as the film never varies its tone, never tries to mix up the idea, and instead doubles down again and again on the same tired premises. Scene begins, someone says the most uncomfortable thing imaginable, everyone reacts awkwardly. Repeat. It all results in one of the most tiresome and insufferable films of 2023 so far.

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