The American Society of Magical Negroes

The American Society of Magical Negroes was a movie that I was sort of looking forward to seeing. Not enough to pay extra but enough to be happy it was on a streaming service. I walked into this knowing that a "magical negro" is a racist trope from 20th century movies, where the token Black is an overly-nice dark skinned person who may or may not have spiritual and/or supernatural abilities that result in peace, happiness or joy for the main white character(s).

So I am not one of the people who are whining that this is racist or offensive to white people.

I am however saying that it was done poorly. For example, David Allen Grier as Roger (the most magical of negroes) tells younger Justice Smith as Aren that he's only nice to white people because he's afraid of them.

Um...you could say this about women being nice to men, about children behaving for authority figures, about common citizens acting passive around the police, about yes white people being afraid of people of color. It's not a convincing idea to me that the Black version of a "nice guy" is only that way because he's afraid of whites.

The scene with the ATM was weird too, it wasn't believable or even funny. A seemingly intoxicated and not too bright young woman asks for help with the ATM and asks Aren to hold her purse, which turns into some white men almost beating him up for a mugging that didn't happen. Like, no.

Aren's art was also bad. He didn't sell his art because his art sucked. There's just so much wrong with the execution of this film in the first 30 minutes that it causes me to believe this would have been funnier and much more powerful as a Key and Peele or SNL skit.