The new rom com “You People,” starring Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy and Lauren London and now streaming on Netflix, has the frank social commentary of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” mixed with “Meet the Parents” family dynamics.
Directed and co-written (with Hill) by “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, “You People” begins as unhappy, socially awkward thirty-something Ezra (Hill) wonders if he’ll ever find a woman who understands him. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a man who ever wanted to be in a relationship so badly,” says Ezra’s best friend Mo (Sam Jay), “besides Drake.”
The part-time podcaster and full-time office worker’s pampering mother Shelley (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) wants him to settle down, but there are no prospects in sight until he mistakenly jumps into fashion stylist Amira’s (London) car, mistaking it for an Uber.
It isn’t exactly love-at-first sight—“You’re a Jew from West L.A.,” she says. “What do you know about culture?”—but over time love blossoms.
“You’re dating a Black girl?” asks Mo. “I have never felt so understood by somebody in my entire life,” he replies.
It’s all sunshine and roses with Ezra and Amira, but this is a romantic comedy, so there have to be obstacles to their happiness. That friction comes in the form of the couple’s parents.
Ezra’s folks, Shelley and Arnold (David Duchovny) are rich, progressive and cringey in their attempts to prove to Amira that there isn’t a hint of racism in the family.
Amira’s parents, the devoted Nation of Islam Muslim followers Akbar (Eddie Murphy) and Fatima (Nia Long), do not warm to Ezra, and make no secret of their feelings over lunch at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.
“So,” asks Akbar, “do you hang out in the hood all the time, or do you just come here for our food and women?”
“You People” takes on hot button subjects, like cultural differences and racial divides, but this is, at its heart, a rom com, so at the end, hurdles will be overcome and happily-ever-afters will be had. That is a given, not a spoiler, just reality, but it is also the weakest part of the movie.
“You People” is at its best when it puts the seasoned cast on screen together. The scenes that gather the young couple and the two sets of parents are highlights, delivering laughs and plenty of situational humour. Subtlety is not on the menu, but Louis-Dreyfus and a deadpan Murphy milk every laugh out of the script, playing up the cultural and faith-based differences that open between the families like a yawning chasm.
“You People” grasps at cultural relevance, but does so with a heavy, although well-intentioned, hand. As the run time moves towards the closing credits, the misunderstandings and accentuation of differences becomes repetitive, miring down the story, despite the efforts of the cast.
The comedy pros keep it as fleet footed as it can be. Only Murphy could get a laugh with a line like, “You shat your slacks?” and I was happy to take the giggles where I could as the movie wound down to its Rom Com 101 ending.
“You People” doesn’t exactly waste its bold face name cast—there are some very funny moments within—but the film’s predictable finish blunts much of the edgy/awkward humour that came before.
Lot of movies were made during the pandemic lockdown, but few addressed what life was like on a quarantined movie set. “The Bubble,” the new Judd Apatow comedy now streaming on Netflix, is a Hollywood satire that mixes-and-matches spoiled stars on a film set with COVID protocols like social distancing, daily antigen tests and a no hooking up with your co-stars rule.
Set during the height of the pandemic, “The Bubble” brings the cast of the dinosaur action pic “Cliff Beasts 6” to a luxury hotel in England for two weeks of quarantining before shooting. Under the watchful eye of a beleaguered producer (Peter Serafinowicz) and inept health official Josh (Chris Witaske), the cast, including franchise star Dustin Mulray (David Duchovny), his on-again-off-again love interest Lauren Van Chance (Leslie Mann), action star Sean Knox (Keegan-Michael Key), actress on the verge of a comeback Carol Cobb (Karen Gillan), character actor Dieter Bravo (Pedro Pascal) and TikTok superstar Krystal Kris (Iris Apatow) arrive and are promptly locked away for two weeks.
For most of them the return to the franchise is simply a matter of a paycheck. For first time director Darren Eigan (Fred Armisen), however, it is a career making gig if only he can wrangle the stubborn actors into seeing his vision.
As the shooting drags on, the actors break rules, hook up and mutiny, all the while complaining that they are being mistreated. “You’re being ‘actor’ mistreated,” says an exasperated manager. “I’m being human being mistreated.”
Basing a comedy on the pandemic is a nervy move. Most of us lived it, locking down and playing by the rules, but part of the pleasure of “The Bubble” is watching these pampered and privileged people placed in a situation where their money and fame don’t matter. Early on, Carol, in isolation in a posh hotel room, devolves into a fugue state despite the splendor surrounding her. It’s an early indication that the pandemic is the great leveler and is fodder for several very funny scenes.
Also pointed is Apatow’s skewering of Hollywood. Ego runs rampant as the insecure actors jump from bed to bed, complain about the script—”It goes against dinosaur logic,” says an oh-so-serious Mulray—and attempt escape from the ever-watchful security. From starting new religions and delivering nasty drop-dead zingers—”I think all the critics around the world were wrong,” says Lauren to Carol in reference to the dreadful Rotten Tomatoes score of her flop “Jerusalem Rising.”—to well-cast and weird cameos from Benedict Cumberbatch and James McAvoy and on-set hi jinx, Apatow hits the nail on the head. Sometimes a little too squarely, but it is an entertaining ride.
The pandemic backdrop of “The Bubble” is a serious, all too recent memory, but luckily the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously. Apatow, whose streak of sticking with a story for just a bit too long is uninterrupted here, finds the right tone, and as the story and characters spin out of control, he finds the funny and doesn’t let go.
There’s an old joke about David Duchovny. In it he goes to a psychic to get his fortune read.
“I have good news and bad news for you” she says, peering into her crystal ball. “Which would you like first?”
“Give me the good news…” he says, breathlessly.
“Well… you will have a long career in movies.”
“Really! That’s great,” he says. “What’s the bad news?”
“Every successful movie you appear in will have the letter “X” in the title.”
And so we have X-Files: I Want to Believe after a ten year big screen Duchovny drought that included films like House of D, Connie and Carla, Trust the Man and many other movies you haven’t heard of.
Set in a bleak and snowy West Virginia the story begins when a female FBI agent is abducted. After a convicted pedophile priest named Father Joe (Billy Connolly) has visions related to the agent’s disappearance the retired and reclusive Fox Mulder (Duchovny) is called in to help with the case. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) his former FBI partner, now his partner in life, has also left the agency and is working as a doctor. She grudgingly becomes involved in the missing persons case despite endlessly reminding Mulder that she’s “done chasing demons in the dark.” At the same time she becomes emotionally involved with a young patient who can only be saved with a radical, invasive procedure. When the psychic gives her a veiled, opaque message she wavers between trusting her head and her heart.
On The X-Files television show, which ran for 202 one-hour episodes from 1993 to 2002, FBI Agents Mulder and Scully—one a believer the other a skeptic—investigated all manner of strange and supernatural phenomenon. No paranormal plotline was too far out for the brooding duo. They looked into the man-eating Jersey Devil, extraterrestrial serums and mutated killer cockroaches. The show was ominous and dark, but it had imagination, a trait sadly lacking from X-Files: I Want to Believe. Co-writer and director Chris Carter seems to have eliminated the “para” from the show and emphasized the “normal.”
The film is a run-of-the-mill detective story with a psychic angle tacked on. Cardboard characters—former Pimp My Ride host Xzibit as Agent Mosley Drummy is direct from the angry cop section at Central Casting—repetitive dialogue and a non-climax make I Want to Believe a lackluster affair.
Duchovny and Anderson bring little of the sexual tension that propelled their relationship on the TV series. He has a few of the trademark Mulder one-liners—and there is a good gag that suggests George W. might be an alien—but Anderson’s role has been significantly reduced. She’s a doctor who searches for ways to treat her patients on Google and spends much of the movie chanting, “That’s not my life anymore.”
A big screen adaptation of a television show should improve on the small screen efforts, but instead series creator Chris Carter offers up a talky nonstarter that barely measures up to the source material. Even a casual X-Files fan could name any number of episodes far superior than this unnecessary remounting.
