Hello and welcome back to another week here at Mindless Movies Reviews. It’s not quite Summer here where I am, but the weather is making us feel otherwise and it’s great. I was a little behind schedule over the last few days, so I didn’t have time to see “The Fall Guy” like I planned, but thanks to the magic of streaming services, I was able to find a new release to watch. The one I ended up choosing was “The American Society of Magical Negros” Keep reading below to find out my exact thoughts, but to say I was disappointed is an understatement. If you still want to move forward and read it, just know that there are spoilers up ahead. In the meantime, check out some of my other reviews here.
I have to admit that when I first heard about this, I didn’t know what to expect. The trailer alone led me to believe it was going to highlight some of the underlying racial bias that plagues our society, but it also seemed like it was going to be funny. Although it did have some funny moments, it fell flat on both accounts. Written by Kobi Libii, this was also his first time directing a movie. So, maybe his movies will get better with time.
“The American Society of Magical Negros” stars Justice Smith as Aren, a young man who is constantly living a very uncomfortable life where he is always afraid and where he is always apologizing. He never feels seen or heard, so when Roger (David Alan Grier) sees this and follows him, it turns his life upside-down. Roger tells Aren about a secret society he belongs to and he thinks he would be a good fit to join them. After much convincing and some magic, Aren agrees and officially becomes a part of this secret group. This secret group’s sole purpose is to make white people feel better so their stress levels are lower and there will be less violence towards black people. I have always loved David Alan Grier and his take on comedy and facial expressions, both of those things were lacking here. I still enjoyed his character, but they should have given him more funny line or made his character be a bit more eccentric or something. While Smith is playing a character he is very good at playing since he always does the same acting routine every time.
Aren eventually gets his first assignment from Roger and then things start to change for him. His first big job for The Society is to help someone (white guy) named Jason (played by Drew Tarver) manage his stress level at his job, so Aren starts to work with him. He soon finds out that a woman named Lizzie (An-Li Bogan) he ran into (literally) at a coffee shop also works there and he begins to develop feelings for her. When he finds out that Jason does as well, he is told that he is to not interfere with them and just to make Jason happy. This is a task that Aren finds harder and harder to do as he gets to know both Jason and Lizzie.
The whole thing comes to a head when Aren finally decides that he doesn’t care about the magic and wants to be with Lizzie. There is a heated exchange right on a live webcast where Aren finally admits to everything he’s been feeling and letting Jason know how he feels. There is a quick moment when Jason appears to finally understand, and Aren runs away to be with Lizzie. With the magic broken (since he broke the rules), Roger isn’t able to erase his memory, so he and Lizzie get to walk off into the sunset.
Ok, there are lots of good mediums to display the countless number of social awareness issues in this world and none of them better than in a movie. This one was setup to tell whatever story it wanted to. The base-layer was laid out for with a blank canvas to build on and for some reason, they just painted over most of it. We got nothing of Roger’s past that would lead us to believe why he was working for The Society, we didn’t get any sort of aftermath of the Aren/Jason live webcast argument. There were numerous times when they could have put in anything of value, instead, we get a bunch of bland jokes from Nicole Byer’s Dede and some uncomfortable re-creations of The Green Mile.
Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely no expert on the perfect way to display social awareness on the big screen, but I do know this one isn’t it. If you are reading this before watching, save yourself some time and just read this again. I’m giving this a 3 out of 10, and I may be stretching on that!!!
Join me again here next week where I hope to make it out to theaters and bring you another new movie review.
