“You People” Movie Review

Story posted February 1, 2023 in CommRadio, Arts & Entertainment by Erell Williams

The film “You People” was released Jan. 27 on Netflix starring celebrities such as Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy, Lauren London and Yung Miami. The romance comedy has been sitting at number one on the Netflix top ten most watched since its drop.

The main characters of this film are in a developing interracial relationship, black and white, and while they share a love for one another their parents cause a ruckus.

Visually the film is not bad.

It keeps an okay color grading and fleshes out some unique shots and editing decisions.

The locations were also selected nicely and suited what the movie was going for.

Certainly nothing spectacular, but respectable overall.

The actors, particularly Murphy, David Duchovny and Nia Long, put on worthy comedic performances often feeling familiar and generally spot on.

“You People” contains beautiful cinematography, wonderful actors, solid art direction and fairly okay stylistic choices overall, but what really stands in the way of making this movie good is the screenwriting.

Throughout the film, a major issue in writing was the need to explain the jokes. It is a well known saying that a joke is not good if it needs to be explained, yet the film did it frequently.

Not only did the jokes fall flat, but they wasted time and attempted to pander to an audience while also being entirely offensive and inaccurate at times.

Comedy definitely appeals to different audiences, however, so many of the jokes were not given a chance to land or be spruced up by the usually funny actors.

Additionally, a lot of the message in the movie focused on race and the social aspects of engaging in interracial relationships during intense racial climates.

This topic is hugely controversial and incredibly important and bringing light to common issues through humor is actually admirable.

The movie sadly over exaggerated to the point that the message could not get across clearly and lacked the important humorous aspect.

“Guess Who” is another movie with a similar plot that tackles the same issue in a much more tasteful and more entertaining way. In comparison, “You People” fails to recognize its audience and hook them.

Another issue that comes with the writing are the underdeveloped character-audience relationships. Since most of the characters are too exaggerated and not complex enough, it is hard to understand the characters unless a viewer actively goes out of their way.

On top of everything, the plotline was not clean. Normally plotlines are clear and follow a guide with an obvious point of conflict and solution with room for plot twists.

During this film, viewers can easily be confused about the purpose of some scenes. At the end of the story watchers will realize that the runtime could have been 20 minutes shorter and made 10 times better.

The writers absolutely had a great idea and the concept can be and has been executed well before, but the movie was not up to par.

Unfortunately, “You People” was a mediocre movie at best with very few positive aspects.

Rating: 1/5

Erell Williams is a second-year majoring in broadcasting journalism. To contact her, email exw5303@psu.edu.

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Erell Williams

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Erell Williams is a first-year student, and her intended majors are Broadcasting Journalism and Chinese. She grew up in Douglassville, Pennsylvania. She is a member of the CommRadio News and Arts department. To contact her, email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).