American Fiction
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison's writing career has stalled because his work isn’t deemed “Black enough.” Monk, a writer and English professor, writes a satirical novel under a pseudonym, aiming to expose the publishing world's hypocrisies. The book’s immediate success forces him to get deeper enmeshed in his assumed identity and challenges his closely-held worldviews.
Wokeness: 40%
Overall Score: 80%
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User Submitted Reviews
Kurt Hansen
Aside from the obvious go-to choice
Of course this film centers around black issues and has a black cast. For that, it's actually a great story and Jeffrey Wright is a cool lead.
Why the gay brother? Why gay? He could have been the "black sheep" of the family for having a lazy eye, or being the youngest, or oldest sibling, or maybe he talked with a lisp. And over-the-top, speedo wearing gays for no other reason than to move the agenda forward. Shame, an interesting story with great acting hijacked by Hollywood box-checkers.
Created: 02-09-2024
Bob A
Nicely skewers the beliefs of woke people about black culture
This was well written and well acted. Yes, it’s about the issues that black people face and one of the main characters is gay and those are both things that would score high on the studio’s DEI requirements. BUT, mostly the film makes fun of what woke white people think about black people and how such people actually make life harder for the people they claim to be allied to.
That’s a noble mission in my book! So ON BALANCE, not woke for me.
Created: 04-06-2024
Michaels
Schrödinger’s movie
Previous reviews rate this film as 5/5 woke and 0/5 woke. It is simultaneously woke and anti-woke, and only after you watch it will you know what it is for you.
The core message is anti-woke, yet it has one character who will be repulsive to the non-woke.
This film follows a black author who, desperate to get published, writes about fictional oppression. This highlights the core problem with wokeness: it's a grift. We also see the championing of faux black injustices by white suburbanites. The blacks sitting at the same table try to bring them back to reality, but the woke whites outvote them, how apropos.
The black author has a PhD, his brother is a plastic surgeon, his sister is a hospital doctor, and his black girlfriend is a lawyer. The father is described as a genius, as is the black author. This is laying it on thick, but I was able to suspend disbelief, in part because Jeffrey Wright plays the genius role so well (and often).
Why oh why did they have to make the brother gay? The character is a very unsympathetic, cocaine-binging, orgy in-your-face kind of gay. This character was also gay in the novel upon which the film is based, "Erasure", but the film deviates significantly in other ways, so pity they didn't "erase" this character. The intention may have been to criticize this lifestyle, but it does not succeed in doing so, since some characters accept him as he is.
The ending is masterful. Oddly, multiple IMDB reviewers thought the ending missed the mark. So, YMMV.
I will give it a 2/5 woke rating for the homosexual character and his gay lovers. For me, the anti-woke aspects do not compensate. The film is less enjoyable as a result, overall just average, 3/5.
Created: 04-28-2024
