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A Tortured Archetype is Run Through an Even More Torturous Movie


The American Society of Magical Negroes works great as the premise for a Key & Peele sketch -less so for a feature-length movie. The funniest bits about the concept that forms the backbone of this debut film from writer-director Kobi Libii can be condensed to less than fifteen minutes of run-time. Everything else that is either built out of or arbitrarily hung onto this idea doesn’t need it.
This is a movie that is half rom-com underscored by themes of white supremacy and individual black autonomy, half fantasy satire on a specific trope of white fiction -and the two feel very much a world apart: the former aspects rooted in very grounded relationships and social commentary, interrupted every so often by this extravagant context of a secret world of black wizards that is so blunt in its political character it feels utterly disingenuous. As though the whole conceit were just an excuse to patronizingly mock its cliché of choice.
And it leans into that hard. Much as the characters involved in this society are meant to take it seriously, from David Alan Grier’s veteran mentor figure right up to Nicole Byer’s supreme leader, every line about what they do and their mission statement is dripping with venomous sarcasm. The Magical Negro is of course the occasionally used term for a prevalent stock character in books and movies: the black figure whose role is largely to effect change in a white protagonist with little thought or consideration for themselves, and often with some vague connotations of ethnic wisdom or spirituality that also is only convenient for the white hero. One of the most popular examples as noted by Spike Lee (credited with popularizing the term) is John Coffey in The Green Mile -and indeed Stephen King is often accused of making use of this trope. The Green Mile specifically is parodied across several scenes of this movie -other references include Lilies of the Field and Driving Miss Daisy. And it's in these and a spare few other moments of demonstrations of the magical influence that the movie can be funny. The establishing scene, in which Justice Smith's yarn artist protagonist Aren is seemingly cosmically ordained into a hostile situation at an ATM that is only resolved by the divine arrival of Grier’s Roger to work his wonders is pretty hilarious.
There's even something to be made of the underlying darkness, repeatedly brought up, behind the Society's philosophy -that being that assuaging white discomfort by playing into a stereotype is the only way to combat racism, or more explicitly, racial hate crimes. Of course it is only the new recruit, an already insecure Aren who has it in him to realize the fundamental flaw in how the Society understands race relations. There is definitely a Boots Riley style to the tone that Libii is going after here. But he doesn't have Boots Riley's sardonic vigour or depth of conviction, and is a bit haphazard in the ways he applies his joke. For instance, where the line should be drawn is at the inclusion of real historical figures as "Magical Negroes", and yet both Crispus Attucks and Rosie the Riveter are identified as such here. There's also a lack of forcefulness to his themes -indeed he seems to sympathize with this made-up Society's position, and ultimately only hints at broad reformation. He lets the story be more about this one guy than the ideas -which is valid in its own right, but hurts the larger picture to the satire.
As Aren embarks on his first assignment, to help motivate a white developer at a social media company who in Cyrano fashion has a crush on the same co-worker he does, the focus of the movie shifts from broad cultural commentary to a subjective reckoning with his own racialized identity in modern America -though even this is mostly in the underlining of an awkward love triangle. It’s a grounded, less hyperbolic area of interest that is just really jarring against the cartoon that the Society comes across as. And by association it jumbles the intensity of the political themes. In one part of the movie you have Aren genuinely grappling with the ways institutional racism has put him on his guard, discouraged him from standing up for himself or even dating a girl because of how it would make white people feel, and eventually arguing passionately on a broad platform for his own self-worth; and in another part of the movie you have a classroom of drones being taught how to best evoke corny grandmother wisdom and a guy whose only real power move is grabbing white guys by the crotch (Libii just can’t get enough of that one gag). Independently, each of these purviews of the movie could be effective; together they blur the line between goofy jokes about white supremacy and real criticism of white supremacy.
The rom-com situation supplemented by this is also just not very good; conventional beats barely filtered through the elaborate context and a perfectly fine if dull chemistry between Smith and An-Li Bogan. Drew Tarver's Jason is a very convenient dupe of a romantic rival as well, written as a fairly easy target for Aren and the film's ideology. On the flip side, the secret society stuff is also not particularly engaging once the novelty and three or four good jokes have worn off. It doesn't take long to break the sarcasm metre, nobody but Grier being in any way believable in their extremely shallow convictions. And the whole aesthetic is just knock-off Harry Potter meshed with Kingsman.
There is a need off the top for The American Society of Magical Negroes to explain itself. The "magical negro" remains an obscure archetype to those ignorant of film and literary critique, and that says a lot about the immediacy of this movie's satire. Libii clearly has bigger fish to fry and attempts to reckon with those, but he's too singularly focused on this one subject that by the end feels like just a pet peeve. It's not a movie that manages its criticism very well, and ultimately fails at trying to be too many things. For a filmmaking debut I will say it's ambitious, but the idea very plainly did not warrant it.

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