Ustedes
(
You People
) is a comedy about love and racial differences, not necessarily in that order, which premiered on
Netflix
on Friday and is already in third place among the most watched movies.
Ezra (
Jonah Hill
) is a young guy who gets fed up with his job as a financial broker in downtown Los Angeles, and decides to slam the door and throw himself into the podcast he does with his friend Mo (Sam Jay).
Mo is African American, and many of the comments they make, on air or in private, will have to do with the racial differences between them (Ezra has the last name Cohen, is white and professes the Jewish religion).
unbearable in-laws
By chance he meets Amira Mohammed (Lauren London), an African-American, a costume designer and what arises between them is love.
And since
Ustedes
is a comedy, complications will arise when they have to introduce their parents.
Misunderstandings and cultural clashes will always be the order of the day.
Eddie Murphy is the father of Jonah Hill's girlfriend in this comedy of culture clashes rather than tangles.
netflix photos
The script, co-written by Hill and director Kenya Barris (African-American), talks about these characters, who dream of starting an interracial family, but as we already said,
Usos
is a comedy, and we know that the genre tends to exaggerate everything to 1) promote laughs , at least smiles or a grimace on the face;
2) talk about deeper issues, somewhat muted through humor.
But there are too many clichés and corniness, apart from an important cast.
Jonah Hill's character is white and Jewish, and Lauren London's is African-American.
Love is stronger?
The first time the character of Julia-Louis Dreyfus (from the
Veep
series , Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel universe) appears with that of Jonah Hill, it is not clear to us what the family relationship between them is.
And she turns out to be her mother (yes, don't look it up on Wikipedia: she's 22 years older than him, so she can do it, even though she looks much younger than her 62 years).
And well, just like
Eddie Murphy
, who plays Amira's Muslim and demanding father, and London "play" African-Americans, because they are, Hill, Dreyfus and David Duchovny (Fox Mulder in
The X-Files
series is the father of Ezra, who unlike Amira's, who is an architect, is a podiatrist: what a laugh) they play whites and Jews.
Because You are the type of comedy in which the "differences" are marked with a thick brush, both in images and in the dialogues.
All together.
Duchovny, Dreyfus and Hill, London, Murphy and Nia Long live the differences.
Every time Akbar Mohammed (Eddie Murphy) or Shelley (Dreyfus) open their mouths, inappropriately racist comments come out.
And the problem with the film is that there's no room for surprises, except for how the resolution is reached, but hey, what happens is predictable for a romantic comedy anyway.
Actor and screenwriter Kenya Barris makes his feature film directing debut, after the
#BlackAF
and
Black-ish
series .
Clearly the issue of the difference in skin color has been marking him in his projects, and in this case he wastes the talent of his interpreters.
"You"
Regular
Comedy.
USA, 2023.
Original title:
“You People”
.
117', SAM 16.
From:
Kenya Barris.
With:
Jonah Hill, Lauren London, Eddie Murphy, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, David Duchovny.
Available on:
Netflix.
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