Andrea Savage | Through the Shattered Lens

Let’s hear it for War of the Worlds, the 2025 film that took one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written and then re-imagined it as something really stupid.

It takes a certain amount of balls to take a book that was written in the 19th century and to adapt it as a low-budget screenlife film. Plus, the idea of making the protagonist an employee of the DHS who abuses his power to monitor his children, and his daughter’s boyfriend? That’s actually kind of clever. Good for you, movie! Way to point out just how invasive our current surveillance state is. It always kind of amazes me that, here in America, we’ve given up so much of the freedom that people died for but, whenever you point that out to people, you just kind of get an apathetic shrug.

You know what isn’t a good idea? Casting Ice Cube as the DHS employee in question.

Ice Cube plays Will Radford, the straight-laced and uptight DHS employee and 90% of the film is basically just shots of him staring at the screen of his laptop. During the day, he argues with his kids and tries to ascertain the identity of a mysterious hacker. He also checks in with Clark Gregg (who plays the head of the DHS) and with a NASA scientist who is played by Eva Longoria. Let’s give some credit where credit is due and admit that Clark Gregg seems to understand exactly what type of film that he’s in and, as such, he gives about as good a performance as anyone could in the role. Eva Longoria, on the other hand, comes across as if she’s just killing time until the next Democratic convention comes around.

But let’s get back to Ice Cube. Ice Cube is not a bad actor. When cast in the right role, he can bring an unbeatable authenticity to the screen. That said, Ice Cube does not have a particularly wide range. When he was cast as the Captain Dickson in 21 Jump Street, the intentional miscasting made for one of the best jokes in the film. In War of the Worlds, when Will starts yelling at his daughter’s boyfriend, it’s hard not to be reminded of Captain Dickson reacting to Jonah Hill dating his daughter in 22 Jump Street. The only problem — well, not the only problem — is that War of the Worlds is not meant to be a comedy.

So, what is War of the Worlds meant to be? It’s not easy to say. It’s certainly not meant to be any sort of tribute to H.G. Wells and his classic novel. If anything, the film seems to take a perverse joy in not caring about the source material. It can be argued that the film is meant to be a commercial for Amazon, seeing as how an Amazon drone plays a key role in the film’s conclusion. Considering that the film was released on Prime, that certainly seems to be a fair interpretation. In the end, even though the villains are ultimately revealed to be some of Will’s colleagues, the film still feels like a perhaps unintentional endorsement of the Surveillance State. Where would be without Ice Cube watching over us?

Where indeed?

Ezra Cohen (Jonah Hill) and Amirah Mohammed (Lauren London) have been dating for six months. Ezra is a Jewish atheist who works at a brokerage firm but who says his lifelong dream has been to be a podcaster. Lauren is Black and a devout Muslim. A graduate of Howard University, she is pursuing a career as a designer. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, Ezra and Amirah are deeply in love and want to get married. However, becoming engaged also means …. MEETING THE PARENTS!

Shelley and Arnold Cohen (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny) are self-styled progressives who immediately embarrass Ezra by going out of their way to trying to show how liberal and non-racist they are. Shelley, in particular, goes out of her way to bond with Amirah but it’s immediately obvious that Shelley views Amirah as being more someone to show off than as an actual human being. Meanwhile, Akbar Mohammed and Fatima Mohammed (played by Eddie Murphy and Nia Long) are members of the Nation of Islam who admire Louis Farrakhan and who claim that the Jews were behind the slave trade.

Just from that plot description, you can see a huge part of the problem with the new film, You People. Whereas Shelley’s problem is that she’s too quick to brag about how much she loves the idea of having a black daughter-in-law, Akbar’s problem is that he’s an anti-Semite. His main objections to Ezra are that 1) Ezra isn’t black and 2) Ezra’s Jewish. While Shelley takes Amirah shopping, Akbar tries to get Ezra killed by tricking him into wearing “the wrong colors” to a barbershop. While Shelley shows off Amirah to all of her liberal friends, Akbar shoves Ezra onto a basketball court. While Shelley is awkwardly trying to prove that she’s an ally, Akbar is inviting himself to Ezra’s wild Las Vegas bachelor party. (Akbar is disturbed to discover that Ezra has a “coke guy.” If this film had been made ten years ago, Ezra would have had a weed guy and it would have been easier to buy the film’s contention that Akbar is being unreasonable.) Shelley is certainly obnoxious and she fully deserves to get called out for her behavior. But Akbar is an anti-Semite who peddles the type of conspiracy theories that have been at the center of the alarming rise in recent hate crimes. Whereas Shelley is clueless, Akbar is actually malicious. And while that’s a story that one certainly could try to tell, it also makes it a bit difficult to buy the film’s fanciful ending. The movie ultimately can’t decide if it wants to be a fearless satire of race relations or a feel-good romcom. The tone of the film switches from scene to scene and Kenya Barris’s direction is so inconsistent that he makes Judd Apatow look like a disciplined filmmaker by comparison.

The cast is full of talent but the characters are largely one-dimensional. Jonah Hill is undoubtedly a good actor but he’s also nearly 40 years old and, with his full beard, he looks about ten years older, which makes it a bit hard to believe that he would be that concerned with getting the approval of his future in-laws. At first, a role of Akbar would seem ideal for Eddie Murphy but, with the exception of a scene where Akbar quizzes Ezra on his favorite Jay-Z song in an attempt to trick Ezra into saying the “n-word,” Murphy doesn’t really get to do much other than stand around with a pained expression on his face. Probably the most interesting performance in the film comes from Mike Epps, who plays Akbar’s brother and who is one of the few characters willing to call everyone out on their hypocrisy. But, unfortunately, Epps is only in a handful of scenes and the film uses him as more of a dramatic device than a fully rounded character.

As I watched You People, I couldn’t help but think about another film about an interracial wedding, Rachel Getting Married. That film provided a believable and multi-layered look at two different cultures coming together. You People, however, can’t quite make up its mind what it believes or what it wants to say and, unfortunately, what it does say is often said with a surprising lack of self-awareness. At times, it’s so proud of itself that it feels like it almost could have been written by Shelley Cohen.

You People is streaming on Netflix.