You People review: Eddie Murphy, Jonah Hill try to solve racism with cringe

Let someone else tell you: America’s interracial relationships are often unpredictable in unexpected ways. No matter how good-hearted a person may be, any questioning of their assumptions about the world and life will cause discomfort and disorientation. Mistakes are bound to happen. 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 Netflix’s new comedy You PeopleIt is in.

Modern take on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, You Peopleexplores the awkwardness and difficulties of inter-racial love, as well as the cultural conflict and culture exchange that it brings. Kenya Barris directed (Black-ishThe film is directed by Barris and Jonah Hill. It follows Ezra Cohen, a white Jewish man who falls for Amira Mohammed (Lauren London), an African Muslim woman. Both of them are able to anticipate how strange their families will view their relationship in a rhythm that is very true to life. Unfortunately, it’s surrounded by a film that does not feel so true; You People’s story feels assembled on the fly, an endless stream of vignettes with no real point to make but two hours of time to fill, ideally with cringe comedy.

Watching You PeopleThis can be disorienting. Scenes don’t feel written or directed, merely suggested, like an improv show gone immediately off the rails. The scene ends with awkward riffing and a new scenario in which two characters encounter a forced miscommunication. This approach is applied to all kinds of moments: When a member of the Cohens’ synagogue asks Ezra about his penis; when Ezra’s father (played by David Duchovny) babbles on about how much he loves Xzibit; when his mother (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) makes uncomfortably performative attempts to be inclusive; or the many, many times that Ezra pretends he is knowledgeable about Black culture and Amira’s father, Akbar (Eddie Murphy), calls him out on it.

Photo by Parrish Lee/Netflix

If you’ve seen a bunch of Jonah Hill comedies, you can recognize this pattern — an awkward stammering and droning cadence that takes ignorance to its logical endpoint, as Hill’s characters bumble their way into a hole they can’t stop digging for themselves even when they know they should. It’s fun when the actor is a supporting character, less so when he’s one of the protagonists. Hill is able to effortlessly make a meal out of cringe comedy, but it’s not an appetizing one.

This mode is the best. You People comes across as both insincere as a whole, and disingenuous when it comes to Ezra’s character. All of these jokes require Ezra to stubbornly insist that he can hang with Amira’s Black family even though he continually shows he has no idea what he’s talking about — and yet You Peopleit portrays his relationship with Amira in a sincere way.

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. Scenes with Ezra’s podcast partner and best fried Mo (Sam Jay) are laid-back and casually funny, like in their segment that opens the movie, in which they each imagine their “ideal Barack Obama.” And even though Eddie Murphy plays Akbar in a cooly distant and annoyed manner, brief moments of mischievousness surface when paired with other comedians, like Mike Epps or Deon Cole, the latter of whom helps him riff on throwing a Tron-style wedding.

There’s this weird notion that good comedy is offensive, when in fact it’s empathetic. In order to make someone laugh and do it consistently, it’s necessary to understand something about them first. The inspiration behind films like You PeopleA good laugh can turn out to be quite funny. You PeopleHowever, it is more interested in ignorance than anything else, so it quickly gets boring. Because the most offensive comedy isn’t ignorant or bigoted, it’s simply boring.

You PeopleNetflix now has the ability to stream it.