American Fiction

"American Fiction" has a great premise, one of the best in any movie this year. And I overall liked it and think it was well made, so I'm rounding my score up to reflect that. But it somehow didn't completely land for me, in a way that I find hard to explain.

I think it was the domestic drama part of the film that didn't completely work for me. The movie spends a lot of time on all the ways that Jeffrey Wright feels overwhelmed by his life's responsibilities, and it sags in some of these parts, and makes the movie feel a little bit like a slog. And I don't know that I ever completely believed the character played by Sterling K. Brown, who never seemed convincing as a gay man. But I did like what the film had to say about the burden placed on black people to constantly be representing black people everywhere that white people never have to deal with. And I also liked the choose your own adventure ending that takes the film into meta territory in its final scenes.

So, solid double for me, but not a home run.

Grade: A-

The part of the movie that concerns liberal white guilt driving forcing black voices into a box is funny and right on point. I live in the same area as this movie takes place and know many black people who express the same sentiments as the main character here... (Monk). But ironically it seems that the story that wanted to be told was likely interfered with by corporate suits and perhaps the screenplay didn't have a great ending.

Most of the movie is wonderful but the main character's LGBT brother is very likely not needed and was put in there to satisfy an agenda. Ironically... this movie itself is a vehicle for the message while also critiquing it. And at the end of the story it looks like it is going to go with a very Tootsie like ending but they do a few zigs and zags that I wonder if was just to extend the run time.

Overall though, very entertaining.

This was really good on so many levels. It was funny and thought-provoking and intelligent. I can see it landing a number of Oscar nominations, and not just so the academy can show off its new found diversity (although that would be fitting given the storyline and themes this movie tackles).

In short, Thelonius Ellison is a struggling author. When his latest book doesn't sell because it's not "black enough" he writes the most cliched black novel he can come up with, full of gang bangers and hoes. His agent submits it under a nom de plume and wouldn't you know, it becomes a best-seller. That's the bones of this story but it's so much more than that, as Ellison deals with an aging mother, an older brother who has just recently come out, and a new girlfriend. There's a twist towards the end of this movie that I won't spoil, but just suffice to say it made a good movie great IMO.

I had not heard of this movie before the lead-up to the Oscars, and I thought that it sounded like an intellectual endeavour that would be important to watch. What I didn't expect was that it would be so much fun - hilarious, in fact!

Jeffrey Wright was spot-on in his depiction of a frustrated academic getting in trouble with his liberal white colleagues and students for being blunt when talking about race. Outside of his job, he's generally grumpy with everything and everyone. But in watching what he has to deal with, we really can't blame him: modern America expects everyone to be ambitious and better themselves, but when Monk does this, he feels like a fish out of water and only gains fans when he pretends to be a "poor boy from the hood".

This movie addresses a lot of issues, covering homophobia, infidelity and grief, as well as racism, but it does so with a light touch. By focusing on characters and entertainment, it enlightens viewers without ever feeling like a lecture.

A movie about a black author tired of the simple and unidimensional exposure of the African-American culture and white people regarding it as holy work. As a protest, he fed them with a fiction of his own about the poverty and the hardships that come with being black. The book is so void of anything to him and his PhD in literature that he sends it to publishers as a joke, but little did he know that it was the demise of his morale. As some might find the end disappointing, it is very highlighting the whole speech of the movie. Because by the end, the audience is treated as the movie's white people; when it could have stopped on a question mark, it proposes an alternative ending that would please the masses.