Written and produced in partnership by Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris, You People is a romantic-comedy and social satire. Jewish finance broker and side hustle podcaster Ezra (Jonah Hill) is unlucky with love, always paired with nice Jewish girls, his mother, Shelley (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). African American Muslim costume designer Amira (Lauren London) is also unlucky with love, her father, Akbar (Eddie Murphy), interferes and undermines her decisions. They meet by accident; the rest is a wild ride with plenty of mental gymnastics surrounding race politics.
The first ten minutes are dedicated to establishing Ezra’s story, which tells us pretty much everything we need to know about his life, flaws, etc. My first and continuous critique is that Amira’s backstory and life do not get as much detail or time as Ezra’s.
About 20 minutes into the film, I haven’t laughed out loud yet. That’s not to say that the film isn’t funny, it’s quirky, and I smiled some, but it hasn’t yet made me cackle.
There’s a bit of a magic dating montage for Ezra and Amira; their chemistry is pretty strong, but it’s a shame that some of the most fun in rom-coms was rushed through. I don’t like the dating dragged out, but it is fun to see the couple interact in different settings and, especially, to see the couple introducing each other to their friends. And this is another grievance I have towards Amira’s storyline; she’s got no best girlfriend to discuss Ezra with – like, Ezra has Mo (Sam Jay), but Amira doesn’t get that throughline and open dialogue that he has.
We later see Amira’s friend group at the bachelorette party, which barely shows the friend dynamic. This is something I grow increasingly disappointed about throughout the movie.
After the “Six Months Later” break, Ezra introduces Amira to his family. Of course, this is humiliatingly cringe. Ezra’s father, Arnold (David Duchovny), is remarkably not self-aware, and Shelley is trying too hard to connect with Amira that she is outright being offensively obtuse about her race. On the other hand, Ezra’s sister, Liza (Molly Gordon), is perfect; no notes.
Admirable that Ezra tries to call out his mother for being so… cringe, but he doesn’t get his point across properly, and Shelley misses the point entirely because Ezra also drops the bomb that he wants to marry Amira. Cute. However, we don’t see Amira introduce her parents to Ezra; we see him at a diner attempting to ask their permission to propose. I feel like the omission of Amira in certain scenes tells of this film’s true intentions. As much as they give Amira conflict and an arch, it’s not nearly given the attention that Ezra and Akbar are.
Amira’s mother, Fatima (Nia Long), is lovely and compliments Eddie Murphy’s performance as Akbar quite well, but I find it odd that her part is so tiny. There isn’t that mother/daughter bond where she’s there for Amira when Akbar is a little too much. I think Nia Long does terrific with what she was given, but I don’t think she was nearly given enough.
Jonah Hill has mastered the art of cringe comedy. He constantly humiliates himself in You People, and I don’t think this style is for me.
Regardless of the horrendous confrontation between Ezra, Fatima, and Akbar in that diner, the couple still ends up engaged in a pathetic display of self-doubt from Ezra, coddled by Amira. It’s not the most dreamy proposal, nor would I call it a spontaneously romantic proposal in the living room. This scene was marinated in what would eventually push the two apart. In the end, a clever foreshadowing, if that was the intention.
Now that the couple is engaged, they buy a house together, and EZRA QUITS HIS JOB! Indeed the opposite of what most women want, but Amira is all for him following his passion of being a straight white man with a mike. And due to their families’ differences, the two decide to put their marriage on the back burner.
This is where things go off the rails. Like, there have been instances where Akbar has said things, and I’ve been sceptical, but then he fully outright claims to be buddies with Louis Farrakhan. I don’t really understand the purpose of making Eddie Murphy a vaguely Hotep, anti-vax, antisemitic sympathiser. AND SHELLY HAS HER ISSUES TOO! She clearly doesn’t grasp or understand how her words and actions are hurtful towards Amira and can be easily called micro-aggressions of racism. I don’t want to say that’s normal for white people and therefore okay because it’s definitely not okay! But, it’s not the actions of an extremist, conspiracy theory white supremacist. Where Akbar’s comments here and there point to an extremist direction, and he doesn’t really ever redact those statements or clarify his beliefs in that department. I don’t know. This is murky territory for me as a white woman, but from what I understand, this should be more controversial.
You People. (L to R) Jonah Hill (Writer-Producer) as Ezra and Lauren London as Amira in You People. Cr. Tyler Adams/Netflix © 2023.
I mean, in the end, Akbar and Shelley come around and band together to put the pieces of their kids’ relationship back together. That’s definitely redeemable for a lot of what they put Ezra and Amira through in this whole process, but I’m not sure it solves everything? Maybe that’s the point! Like, Ezra and Mo have monologues in the film about how there will never be peace between Black and White people because no matter how much White people try to do right, there will always be a persisting resentment felt by Black people for how they were treated in the past. Maybe that’s part of it! That these things can never be solved… but I do wish we had a little clarification on like where they stand in terms of racial politics… I don’t know, though. Again, I am a white woman, so who am I, right?
To top it all off, Ezra’s podcast gets picked up by Complex, but we never see if Amira’s designs get picked up for a project after she’s rejected when two producers misinterpret her college credentials. Amira doesn’t get the wins that Ezra does outside their relationship, and Shelley’s apology to her isn’t good; it is super vague and oddly too broad? No one asked you to apologise for the human race; you just needed to grasp what you did wrong and work not to repeat those mistakes.
For a romantic comedy, the cutest Ezra and Amira were when they were in the bathroom together after their first hook up, and the funniest this movie got was when Amira and Shelley carpooled and Akbar and Ezra carpooled. That was simple, boomer comedy, and it was good.