Tout simplement noir

This movie aims high with a satyrical discourse take on the various, complex forms of French identity, history of racism and people who feel like a failure in spite of their efforts. The main character is a failed comedian who stumbles into human rights activism on his quest for success in French showbusiness. Soon he finds out he's way over his head in uncharted waters that don't have a lot to do with human rights, but publicity, appropriation and money. The movie demasks activism as something exclusive instead of inclusive and a battlefield of minorities for center stage in social media and politics. Reducing a greater cause as means to an end that only benefits the main protagonists, it's simultaneously entertaining and saddening. Because JP wants to play a game he's completely unfamiliar with and soon finds himself in a crossfire between hooligans, racism, activism and showbusiness that uses humanitarian causes as merely another form of PR. JP turns out to be completely illiterate in terms of social intelligence. You almost feel sorry for him but then again, he just wanted to succeed in showbusiness. The humiliating encounter with the comedienne in her backstage room was painful to watch, but it's a great depiction of the precarious reality of profession.

JP Zadi is my new favourite comedian after watching Simply Black and Represent on Netflix. His basic schtick of the confused uncomfortable expression is already superb even though that's not generally the kind of humour that I go for. But underlying the dopey visage are very cutting observations on race and society that go both ways - critical of both majority and minority attitudes on many fronts. You couldn't make many of these jokes in the US, people have lost all ability to joke about racial issues, which is a terrible shame as it often serves to highlight real and important issues.

Unfortunately my French is a bit meh. Someone tell me where can I find more Zadi in English???

Jean-Pascal Zadi has that thing to make you cringe-laugh with how close he hits home. This comedy is important for addressing identity introspection, which is understandably a huge topic in France, even more so if you were raised in an immigrant family. Regarding the story itself, I found it lacked proper development. I couldn't see a clear arc and the plot progressed without a snatch, so no tension comedy-wise or other. By the end of the movie, I felt we were still midway.

Very powerful message delivered in a very natural manner.

Alot of the content out there shoves the theme/issue in your face to the point that it gets annoying to watch it.

However, Zadi does it with so much humanity that it resonates with you. This is something that'll stay with me.

100% recommend to anyone, irrespective of skin color, to give this a go.

I found this difficult to follow since the dialogue is unforgivingly French and thus the speed of it was not conducive for reading all the lines with subtitles. Would have been better for the English release if they dubbed the whole movie in English, like they did to reel us in with the English dubbed trailer.