“You People” Was a Complete Miss!

When I heard Kenya Barris was making another movie and the theme was a white man meeting his girlfriend’s black family, I was rightfully concerned. And my apprehension about the movie You People was deserved, at least in my humble opinion as a young black woman.

 I could be a little biased given that comedies are my favorite genre in the world, but You People was filled with so many clichés and stereotypes that Eddie Murphy, Nia Long, Lauren London, and Jonah Hill couldn’t save it. 

I believe his favorite trope in general has been interracial couplings, and I can’t blame him for wanting to reflect his own experiences in his work; but will there ever be enough for him? 

This isn’t just a criticism I have for Barris; other directors and creators have also run into a problem where they may have taken a little too much inspiration from their personal lives, such as Mindy Kaling and her strange penchant for writing a dark-skinned Indian girl with an incredibly white and incredibly romantic interest. Why is that? 

Also, why in God‘s name is Jonah Hill’s character Ezra a co-host on a black culture podcast? To me, this made him immediately unlikable from the start.

Lauren London and Jonah Hill are two amazing actors on their own merit, but as Amira and Ezra, their chemistry seemed a little bit lacking. You People follows these two as they fall in love, but the love story seemed a bit rushed as well. 

I didn’t find the time to actually care about the relationship, since it was all in one short montage, and suddenly they were engaged. Also, it is news to me that the final kiss was CGI! They couldn’t even lock lips for the finale of a romantic comedy? 

Barris cast many A-list celebrities and comedians, which was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you could rely on them to give pretty good performances as their perspective characters, but it also felt like one big SNL skit where you had too many big names. 

I couldn’t visualize any of the characters as anything other than the celebrities themselves. The only person who made me laugh in the entire movie was Caresha. I think her performance was great; she’s hilarious.

I could go on and on about how much I didn’t like this movie. I could say how much I hate the stereotypical tropes that Barris likes to use, referring to black Muslim communities and white Jewish communities. I could go on and on about how the pairing was just odd in terms of casting and chemistry. I could go on and on about how corny the jokes were and how none of them got a laugh out of me, but I want to say something else that I did like other than the Bachelorette scene.

I couldn’t find anything.

But to be fair, it could just be me; my friends were hooting and hollering the entire time.