E140 | You People (movie)

<p>A new couple and their families reckon with modern love amid culture clashes, societal expectations and generational differences.<br>Here’s the concept, if you can call it that: Ezra (Hill) and Amira (Lauren London), meet when Ezra mistakes a woman in an idling car for his Uber driver. Amira is an underemployed costume designer on her way to a job interview, and she calls racism. The two spar, then manage to crack each other up. The two share a passion for sneakers and hip-hop – and soon, each other. Goodbye, loneliness! Hello, matching streetwear outfits! It’s sheer bliss. And then … their parents enter the picture.<br>Ezra’s folks, Arnold and Shelley, are a pair of meddling Jews (David Duchovny and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, two of the many heavyweights in this star-studded, and star-crossed cast). They are elated when they meet their son’s new girlfriend, who is beautiful and patient and … it’s hard to say what else. Shelley is a virtue-signaling, challah-serving Jewish mom with a flair for putting her foot in her mouth, unable to stop herself from making comments about Black hair and Louis Farrakhan. “Our family is growing in such a cool and hip and funky way!” she exclaims. “We’re a family of color.”Amira’s parents, Akbar and Fatima (Eddie Murphy and Nia Long), are Black Muslims who also happen to live in the area, all the better to ratchet up the tension. They do not like the cut of Ezra’s jib, which means Shelley’s cloying embrace has a match in Akbar’s incessant razzing of Ezra. He takes the kid who wants to marry his daughter to the Black barber shop, and the basketball court, if only to watch him squirm and renounce his intentions. For her part, Shelley brings Amira to a fancy predominantly white spa.</p><p>The microaggressions fly, but look past the Holocaust jokes and it’s all too evident that not much is happening beneath the surface. The overarching effect of sitting through You People is not unlike watching a Twitter timeline, staring down a smorgasbord of hot-button issues that come without