Ezra Cohen (Jonah Hill) is a stockbroker who also runs a podcast with his best friend, Mo (Sam Jay), where the two discuss various facets of black culture (or "the culture" as Ezra calls it). Ezra is under pressure from his Jewish family particularly his mother Shelley (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) to find a woman but Ezra has a streak of bad luck with his family's setups. Meanwhile costume designer Amira Mohammed (Lauren London) is also dealing with pressure from her opinionated father Akbar (Eddie Murphy) a devout Black Muslim. When Ezra and Amira have a chance encounter they eventually start a relationship until after some time Ezra intends to propose to Amira, but the two's families prove to be a massive obstacle.
You People is a new romantic comedy directed and co-written by Black-ish creator Kenya Barris and co-written and starring Jonah Hill. The movie features an impressive cast with the likes of Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Nia Long, and Deavid Duchovny among several others, and from the marketing you'd probably expect a modern update the framework established by Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with its potentially rich premise of a Jewish family and Black Muslim family creating friction with one another over an incoming wedding, unfortunately while You People has a potentially rich and provocative setup, its payoff feels like a tired rehash of the Fockers films or 2005's Guess Who? With little more brought to the table than an R-rating.
On a positive note, I will say that Hill and London have decent chemistry in their scenes together and on occasion there is an awkward laugh to be taken from individual exchanges in the film, but for the most part the movie doesn't feel like it has a developed cast of characters with most of the talented expanded cast playing very broad one note at best or are given the short shrift at worst. Poor David Duchovny is saddle with a terrible running gag about him going on shpiel's about Xzibit and Elliott Gould is given one line and spends most his presence in the background doing nothing most of the time. Eddie Murphy is also saddled with a role that doesn't play to his strengths as Akbar is a very serious and stoic man who isn't funny or interesting because he's been force to subdue his charisma and he really only comes to life in the role in the last 10 minutes. A large chunk of the movie is an endless parade of scenes where either Ezra or his parents make fools of themselves giving rambling unsolicited commentary on race relations and there's very few scenes where people talk like human beings and these segments are just variations on the same point repeatedly. The movie is also way too long at just under two hours and it feels its length.
You People had a lot of promise as a comedy, but it just does not work at all and most of the best scenes are in the trailer with the rest of the movie an overlong slog that struggles to keep itself going. Sometimes the cast do get a mild snicker from certain exchanges, but not really enough to justify a viewing. Maybe if someone like Jerrod Carmichael had tapped into this kind of material (see On the Count of Three or The Carmichael Show for proof) then maybe something of substance could've been done with it, but as is, it's a mediocre comedy that feels like 2005's Guess Who? With an R-rating.
