Netflix’s interracial dating romcom tries too hard – Rolling Stone

There is an alternative Where is the schedule You peoplethe director’s debut Kenya Press (blackish), is the next great romantic comedy. There is another version where it is a scathing satire that delves into the stress parents can place on their adult children. There’s a more distant option, a sharp critique of race relations that entertains and deals with hard truths about cancel culture, privilege, and faith. While the movie clearly wants to be all of those options, it ends up buckling under the weight of its own intentions and downfalls as well… well, Fine.

Directed by Bryce and co-written by The Leading Man Jonah HillAnd You people It considers itself a modern development Guess who’s coming to dinner. Hale plays Angelino’s boot boss and Jewish son Ezra Cohen, who works a finance job he hates while desperately dreaming of being a full-time culture podcaster with his best friend Mo (Sam Jay). When Ezra accidentally misses Amira Muhammad (Lauren London) car for his share of the ride, the two put together a whirlwind romance full of differences that threaten to tear their relationship apart.

You people Sometimes he is funny in spite of himself. Hale exudes his trademark self-deprecating charisma, turning lines that read forlornly into a playful kind of deadpan negativity. The central sweet encounter is hilarious and awkward in a way that veers closer to endearment than cringe-worthy. As the father of Amira Akbar Muhammad, Eddie Murphy He leaves a lot of lines that mitigate the hostile aspects of his personality, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus He practically steals everything as Ezra’s well-meaning, overbearing Jewish mother Shelly Cohen. Even the one-off characters are played by talented comedians, which leads to laughs here and there from stars like David Duchovny, Mike Epps, Deon Cole, Molly Gordon, Anthony Anderson, Kim Whitley and more. But the movie can’t quite figure out whether it wants to be a love story or a social commentary, and it ends up doing quite well.

The unconvincing pairing of Hill and London had nothing to do with the racial aspect of their relationship. It is simply never shown to the public what makes them stay together. You people He propels the couple’s relationship into a short montage of long dates, matching sneakers and bonding about LA hip-hop culture (London is the ex-partner of the late LA hip-hop icon Nipsey Hussle). Any chemistry for the two in scenes, there he some chemistry, often dwarfed by the collective mismatch of their families.

While Ezra’s every emotion and thought process is developed on screen, Amira is given little agency, lines, or emotions other than frustration. London’s absence becomes even more apparent when a joke about Ezra’s love of cocaine during the boys’ weekend gets more screen time than Amira and Shelley’s real-life confrontation over the Jewish mother treating Princess like a shiny new black Barbie to wear – a shame since London managed to shine though limited lines.

if You peopleHis only goal was to make a two-hour movie with some light laughs, and it could be considered a success. You can’t put Hill, Murphy, and Louis-Dreyfus at the dinner table and leave without a chuckle. But in an effort to answer dozens of questions about race, privilege, interracial relationships, and interfaith families, You people It degenerates into clumsy juggling – and ends up abandoning all of these important themes in favor of surface-level solutions. There are so many great shots of Los Angeles serving as interstitials that anyone who has fallen asleep (and she might have fallen asleep) will wake up and assume they’ve watched any number of videos Barris has made ish TV series.

You people It makes a stronger case for excluding unhelpful family members than it does for mutual understanding between different cultures. And even with all its timely jokes about vaccines and Kanye West, the movie only manages to rehash old arguments and then throw them away for the family feel it didn’t earn — a clichéd solution that makes the movie feel less of a modern take and more like the same old race movie with a new pair. From Air Jordans. If you’re looking for a comedic take on the world we live in now, this might not be the movie for you. Your parents might like it though.