You People

Year 16, Day 43 - 2/12/24 - Movie #4,644

BEFORE: It's interracial couples week here at the Movie Year, that's fine, we allow romantic comedies with characters of all races, religions, orientations and gender identities. All part of the great big pansexual multi-culti country that we live in, or if you're on the Republican side of things, all varieties of "wokeness" are allowed here.  I love how nobody who's against wokeness can even define what it is, like how do you hate something if you don't even understand why you hate it?  Come on, it's really just an all-purpose term for anything that the Right-Wingers don't like.  They were hating on the green m&m for being too sexy, and Mr. Potato Head, too, for being non-gender specific or some ridiculousness.  "I don't like it because it makes me feel icky" should not be any kind of political platform, you either have a country where people are free to be who they want to be and express themselves however, or you don't.  And free speech can't be just for the opinions YOU have and the ones YOU like and not for the opposing viewpoints.  Just saying.  Except hate speech, which is against the law and civil rights and common decency, everything else has to be allowed, I think that's in the Constitution. 

La La Anthony carries over from "Think Like a Man Too". 

EDIT: I forgot that Turner Classic Movies was starting their "31 Days of Oscar" programming  on February 9, so I'm going back and dropping them in post facto.  They're dividing up the movies by category this year, so today is Day 4, devoted to:

Best Art Direction Nominees:

5:30 am "The Merry Widow" (1934)

7:30 am "Inside Daisy Clover" (1965)

10:00 am "George Washington Slept Here" (1942)

12:00 pm "Pride and Prejudice" (1940)

2:00 pm "Brigadoon" (1954)

4:00 pm "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1937)

6:00 pm "Knights of the Round Table" (1953)

Best Art Direction Winners:

8:00 pm "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938)

10:00 pm "The Robe" (1953)

12:30 am "Black Narcissus" (1947)

2:30 am "Tess" (1979)

5:30 am "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940)

I think I can only claim 4 out of these 12, "Inside Daisy Clover", "Knights of the Round Table", "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "The Robe", so 20 out of 45 overall, slipping down to 44.4%.  

THE PLOT: Follows a new couple and their families, who find themselves examining modern love and family dynamics amidst clashing cultures, societal expectations and generational differences. 

AFTER: I'm going to try to save everyone a bunch of time tonight, myself included, and just regard this as a one-joke film.  The two families don't understand each other, that counts as ONE joke.  OK, if I'm being nice then there's the fact that they don't understand each other because they're different races, and then the parents don't understand their kids, which is generational based humor, not racial based humor.  So, OK, two jokes that keep getting told again and again, repeat for almost two hours and roll the credits. 

The concept hearkens back to "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", which was a ground-breaking film from 1967 that had a white girl bringing home a black man (Sidney Poitier) to meet her parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) and then they had to come to terms with that. Well, it was a different time, but hey, thanks for putting that out there as a movie plot-line, because somebody had to do it.  So "You People" is like a race-swapped version of that movie, the black girl brings home a white (Jewish) man to meet her black (Muslim) parents.  All right, I guess if you point out the religious differences, there are really THREE jokes in this film, but that's all.  The weird thing is, there was already a race-swapped version of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", with Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher, and it was called "Guess Who?"  I have not seen it, but I know it exists. 

So my first impulse is to wonder WHY we need "You People", if we already have "Guess Who?"  but lets assume that tonight's film is a bit more straight-up and serious about the social issues of today, and "Guess Who?" is probably a lot of slapstick comedy.  Here Jonah Hill plays Ezra, a white man who follows black culture (I thought they were called "wiggers") and has a genuine love for it, he even hosts a podcast with his black female best friend on the topic.  And when he accidentally gets into a black woman's car, thinking it's his Uber ride, he meets Amira, and they start dating.  Well, first she freaks out because a stranger just got into her car, but once they get over the confusion, they start to like each other. 

Ezra does not do as well with Amira's parents, who are opposed to their daughter dating a white man, even if they don't say that out loud, obviously they'd hoped she would date within their race - meanwhile, Ezra's parents are overly enthusiastic about their son dating a black woman, especially Ezra's mother, who is so interested in the culture and the things she doesn't know much about, like African-American hair, that her comments border on offensive.  She means well, but she doesn't realize that she's using stereotypes or asking too many questions, or just being a white woman overly interested in something that she has no reason to be interested in. She's the one who wants to be "woke", but for some reason, it's not a good look.  

Amira's father tags along on Ezra's bachelor party trip to Vegas (another theme carrying over from "Think Like a Man Too") but he's there to make sure that Ezra doesn't drink, do drugs or cheat on his daughter, so basically he's a big spoilsport and Ezra can't enjoy his own party at all.  OK, sure, weed's legal now, but I'm pretty sure cocaine is still technically not.  Amira's father also can't quite understand that Ezra's best friend is really a woman, he's from that generation that doesn't quite get the non-binary or gender fluid thing.  Me, sure, I see people on the subway that I'm not sure of their gender, but it doesn't matter, I'm not going to date them, so there's no need for me to inquire further.  

The wedding plans continue, and the couple gets all the way to the rehearsal dinner before they decide that the cultural differences between their families are simply too much work to overcome.  This kind of suggests that the wedding can't possibly happen until her father learns to not be so strict in his expecations for Ezra and his mother learns not to treat Amira as if she's some kind of cultural prize that's getting added to the family.  Can the parents learn to work together, or will they just want to out-tragedy each other, comparing the struggles of blacks and Jews throughout history, in a competition to see which culture had to overcome the most? 

Also starring Jonah Hill (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Lauren London (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Eddie Murphy (last seen in "Air"), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (last seen in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), Sam Jay (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Nia Long (last seen in "Lemon"), Travis Bennett (last seen in "Confess, Fletch"), David Duchovny (last seen in "The Bubble"), Molly Gordon (last seen in "Good Boys"), Deon Cole (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), Andrea Savage (last seen in "The House"), Elliott Gould (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Richard Benjamin (ditto), Rhea Perlman (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Mike Epps (last seen in "Term Life"), Yung Miami, Khadijah Haqq (last seen in "Sky High"), Bryan Greenberg (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), Jordan Firstman, Andrew Schulz (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Matt Walsh (last seen in "Unplugging"), Emily Arlook (last seen in "Valentine's Day"), Hal Linden (last seen in "The Automat"), Winnie Holzman, Doug Hall, Anthony Anderson (last seen in "Scream 4"), Ahmad Dugas, Nelson Franklin (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Rob Huebel (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Murray Gray, Felipe Esparza, Kym Whitley (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Doris Hancox, Romy Reiner, Kenya Barris, Chinyere Dobson.

RATING: 5 out of 10 empty seats on a Southwest flight