David Bowie’s Best Performance Came in a Jesus Movie

The Man Who Fell to Earth. Labyrinth. The Prestige. These are the titles that usually come to mind when people think of David Bowie’s film career, and with good reason. Even when playing real-world scientist Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, each of these performances captured Bowie’s ethereal public persona. Bowie floated through the movies like […]

The post David Bowie’s Best Performance Came in a Jesus Movie appeared first on Den of Geek.

In the first episode of #1 Happy Family USA, the animated Prime Video comedy created by Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady, 12-year-old Rumi Hussein is given a precious gift: a hilariously oversized Chicago “Balls” jersey.

“I think this jersey might be too big,” Rumi reports to his father Hussein Hussein (also Youssef).
“Yes, Rumi, it will fit you forever. We didn’t come to this country to buy new clothes every year,” Hussein, who emigrated from Egypt to New Jersey, tells his son.

The bootleg Chicago Bulls uniform discovered by Rumi’s Uncle Jamal through less-than-legal means is an important relic for the young sports fan and for #1 Happy Family USA itself. After all, the image of Rumi in his misspelled kit was the first bit of art released to promote the series.

The jersey is also, it turns out, important to the show’s creator as well, who was gifted an enormous Michael Jordan jersey from his parents as a child.

“It was so big that to this day I could still get into it,” Ramy Youssef tells Den of Geek. “When I started first grade I had on this thing that fit me like a dress. My parents’ whole plan was ‘Michael Jordan will be great forever, and this will fit you forever.’”

It must be said that the Youssefs had a point. Michael Jordan was indeed great forever and it seems as though the jersey will fit forever. That childhood moment also served as the perfect entryway for #1 Happy Family USA‘s comedic but poignant depiction of a very specific time in American history. What specific time, exactly? Well, the series opens with a radio DJ happily anticipating the release of Jay-Z’s album “The Blueprint” the following day. Now to just head over to Wikipedia and check the date The Blueprint was relea…oh. Oh no.

That’s right: #1 Happy Family USA is a 9/11 period piece, a genre that, perhaps unsurprisingly, remains rare. Taking place just before and then just after the events of September 11, 2001, the Prime Video series follows the Muslim-American Hussein family as they adapt to scary new times and make great efforts to prove to their white neighbors that they’re as American as apple pie and baseball. This involves many song-and-dance numbers.

While the specter of 9/11 looms large, the show is really more of a typical slice-of-life sitcom about an ironically oft-forgotten place and time: American youth at the turn of