Some of the best humor, certainly some of the best Jewish humor, is predicated on honest self-observation. Maybe we could use more irreverent but culturally meaningful output on race relations. “You People,” written by Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris, fashions itself such an effort. But really, it is just a millennial version of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” — which is to say, intellectually, emotionally, and artistically vacuous.
“You People” is the story of a love-starved Jewish man named Ezra, played by Hill, and his black Muslim fiancé, Amira, played by the talented Lauren London. Can they make it work? Well, not if the parents get in the way.
We learn very early in the movie that Jews over the age of 40 are either sexual deviants or drooling idiots, American Jewish success is grounded in generational wealth rather than work and tradition, and Jewish culture — insofar as it even exists — is based on materialism. We first meet Ezra’s family at a Yom Kippur service, where older congregants played by Hal Linden (born, Harold Lipshitz, a child of poor Lithuanian Jewish immigrants) and the once-great Richard Benjamin act like depraved nincompoops. And when Ezra is set up by a woman from his family’s temple, she is, naturally, turned off by his lack of concern over money and status.
Amira does not harbor any of these greedy apprehensions. She encourages Ezra to try to quit his job in “finance” — boy, everyone hates those guys! — to pursue his
