Film: You People

 

GENRE: Comedy/Romance
RATING: R for language and some sexual material and drug content
RUNTIME: 1 hour and 57 minutes
PLATFORM: Netflix
STARRING: Jonah Hill (Superbad, Wolf of Wall Street, Don’t Look Up)
Lauren London (The Game-TV show); Eddie Murphy (Coming to America)
DIRECTOR: Kenya Barris (Black-ish)
WRITERS: Barris (Black-ish, Coming 2 America, Cheaper by the Dozen)
Jonah Hill (Mid90s, stories – 21 Jump Street, Sausage Party, Why Him?)
PLOT: Race, religion and family dynamics become a barrier for an inter-racial couple that want to get married   

FULL DISCLOSURE: An interesting cast drew me in.          

STORY STUFF: With all the podcast rants and references to current pop culture and Drake personas, this is definitely a modern take on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. I will admit that I did not get a number of references as I am clueless when it comes to hip-hop anything these days. The white family trying to make connections with their new black future daughter-in-law is both funny and cringy at the same time, as is the white boyfriend trying to suck up to his future father-in-law. We get it pretty quickly but they keep giving us scene after scene with tailored uncomfortable moments.

ACTING STUFF: Hill does well falling into the fast-talking character that he developed in Superbad; except this time, he’s less crude and seems to be in love. London has some good moments but it’s all about Hill. Murphy plays the intense father well but I was hoping for some more comedic rants instead of icy stares. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss (Veep, Seinfeld) nails it as Hill’s unaware mom. David Duchovny (X-Files) plays it low-key with his obsession with Xzibit. It was fun seeing Dreyfuss and Murphy together after they appeared on SNL so many years ago.

ARTISTIC STUFF: The flashy graffiti titles and the TV-ish collage scene transitions put to hip hop music did not work for me. Just not my style. An interesting idea though. It seemed like they really wanted to show a lot of LA in this film – the Capitol Records building really stood out. Not sure if I liked that or not. Was not of a fan of Jonah Hill’s hairstyle.

VERDICT: Three stars out of five
SEE IT IF: You want some cringy laughs and aren’t easily offended.
UPCOMING REVIEW:  Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania