I think I might have seriously underestimated 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. In that movie, a white woman brings home Sidney Poitier to her family proclaiming they are going to marry one another. What results is a relatively light romcom that walks on a knife’s edge without ever becoming overly cruel or discriminatory. You People is going for the 2023 Coming to Dinner modernization. It falls of the knife a few times, but mostly won me over with its heart in the right place, and maybe my favorite weird David Duchovny performance in some time.
Ezra (Jonah Hill) is a 35 year old Jewish banker with a side hustle of podcasting with his best friend Mo (Sam Jay) about black and white popular culture. After mistaking African-American fashion designer Amira (Lauren London) for an Uber Driver, Ezra makes it up to her by asking her out to lunch. Sparks fly, and the two quickly become a couple. And like all couples, marriage might come around the corner soon, meaning Ezra and Amira have to mee the others parents. Not an easy task since Ezra’s mom Shelley (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is racially tone deaf, Amira’s parents Akbar (Eddie Murphy) and Fatima (Nia Long) are devout Muslims, and Ezra’s dad Arnold (David Duchovny) can’t stop talking about Xzibit.
At this point in the US when it comes to race, everyone’s scared to say anything, for fear of offending the other side and sounding racist or like a stereotype. You People is refreshingly not that, unafraid to dive deep into painfully uncomfortable conversations. Kenya Barris and Jonah Hill’s dialogue is aiming to extract uncomfortable laughter from everyone here, and does so more often than not. The movie points this out at the end, but the first meetings with everyone we turn those people into stereotypes to try to relate to them in some way. Of course, if you’re African American, that means lots of causal racism: white people talking about electing Obama for a 3rd term or, in this movie, talking about their love for Xzibit (an incredible runner). Those uncomfortable responses usually raise the alarm for black people, who immediately become skeptical of the people they’re meeting for the first time, making it damn near impossible for anyone to learn to trust anyone, at least not for a long time. While Amira and Ezra have more of an open heart to try to connect with each other’s parents, years of experience have solidified in Akbar and Shelley, who can’t move past the fact that they think their child is dating their vision of what a white/black person is, projecting some sort of failure onto themselves for it. We don’t see this level of cultural discourse very often, and You People gets credit for trying to make it as watchable as possible while also trying to make people really think about race in today’s cultural climate.
The cast certainly helps sell You People, when the script falls short of its ambitions. I’m pretty sure the movie was conceived when Jonah Hill pitched Eddie Murphy as his father in law. Those two are dynamite together, with the self-assured Ezra being called out uncomfortably and hilariously by Akbar, forcing Ezra to reassess. The 6 person dinner between Hill, Murphy, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Lauren London, Nia Long, and David Duchovny is the highlight of the movie, with each person one upping the other to make the most uncomfortable dinner in recent memory, especially Duchovny’s confusing Xzibit rants (can you tell I loved that stuff?). The Louis-Dreyfus and Lauren London conversations need another pass, but both of them commit to the bit, and you really feel the appall and hurt in London that her future mother-in-law can’t connect with her.
You People is an open but confused heart in search of a connection. I like to think I have an open heart, so I embrace the invite this movie is trying to have, and I hope you do too. I mean, some of my favorite movies are about black people! And, for the record, I would have voted for Obama for a third term ;).