"American Fiction" Review: A Poorly-Done Pseudo Satire

Another misleading trailer takes us down a disappointing, misguided path.

December 15, 2023

Near the end of American Fiction, the new film referred to as a “cinematic stick of dynamite,” struggling author Thelonious “Monk” Ellison sits across the table from fellow writer Sintara Golden. The pair are on the judging panel for a prestigious literary award, the token black voices for an institution criticized for lacking diversity. Under consideration is Ellison’s novel, Fuck, written out of spite under the alias Stagg R. Leigh. Ellison’s prior works, written under his given name, have been critically well-received but commercial failures; his publisher encourages him to cater to the big men upstairs and write a “black” book.

After watching a live reading from Golden, whose new novel We’s Lives in Da Ghetto is lighting up the best-sellers lists, Ellison tires of the stereotypical depiction of black people in a white-dominated world and writes Fuck (originally My Pafology) out of spite. The novel is a shallow depiction of the stereotypical black experience, the ones white people clamor for to convince themselves their routine historical oppression of black people offers incredible opportunities for tales of will, soulfulness, and the triumph of the human spirit.

Ellison, who perceives Golden’s serious novel as no different from his spiteful satire, questions her regarding how his book, which she loathes, differs from hers, which she takes seriously. Golden indignantly replies that her novel involved loads of research and that Ellison’s claim that black people have more potential than their typical treatment is displaced frustration. Potential, she claims, is a word for people who think that what lies before them isn’t good enough.

If ever a film mastered the art of irony, it's this one.

American Fiction overflows with potential; look no further than its trailer, which presents the film in its best light, as all good advertising does, while masking that not only is this general portrayal incomplete but a gross misrepresentation of the movie. Although filmgoers chomped at the bit to feast upon two hours of scathing, uproarious satire, the film is less a commentary on anything than a sluggish, unfocused family drama.

Conflicting ideologies cannot occupy the same place and time; if they do, disaster strikes, messages get muddied, intent gets foggy, and interpretation is left to the whims of the very people the film sought to inform. On the one hand, American Fiction wants to be a forthright dissection of white people’s Svengali-like hold on the cultural perception of the black experience. On the other, it wants to be a soapy family melodrama. Unfortunately, it does neither of these well enough to earn accolades as either, and by attempting both, it fails to approach the greatness it seeks on principle.

The supposed A-plot, where Monk’s frustrations boil over into a stroke of spiteful literary genius and ironic success, has funny moments more than it's funny in and of itself. Aside from when Monk, tired of the nonsense inflicted upon him by white bigwigs, demands to change his novel’s name to Fuck, none of the film’s humor is memorable, the most damning indication that insight got left at the door. Yes, you’ll laugh, but you’ll take away nothing from that comic experience, which is the movie's purpose.

Within this plot, this is mostly because it fails to distinguish between slapping us across the face with reality and being preachy. Much of its dialogue regarding white people's savior complex and general inability to accept truth that undermines their self-righteousness is too on the nose to feel conversational, which is a problem because, after all, it is within conversations that Monk gradually learns to adopt a more full-bodied perspective. If the characters cannot hit the right notes between one another, how are we meant to observe them and take away something of substance?

It certainly won’t be from the rest of the film, which handles Monk’s personal life with all the conceptual tact of a Mack truck. Although the specific scenes have enough grace to feel worthy if the film had developed solely from that angle, the broad ideas are overwrought.

Monk’s mother gets diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, forcing the family to place her in an assisted care facility; his philandering father died long ago; his brother, Cliff, has recently come out of the closet after his wife caught him in bed with another man, and has taken to recreational drug use as part of his newfound sexual liberation; his sister, Lisa, dies of a heart attack not 20 minutes into the movie. The family is so overwhelmed with tragedy and struggle that it doesn't feel genuine. One could argue it’s a commentary on the ceaseless plight of black Americans in a white-dominated country, but that would be a stretch the film never deserves us making.

It almost feels like the movie knows this because while the mother is too absent and Cliff too obnoxious, it’s they the movie proceeds with while killing Lisa off, a cheap aim at heightening the emotional stakes by stripping the film of its most likable character and saddling its protagonist with the family members who are most, by their will or not, difficult to deal with. The only saving grace is the family’s everywoman employee, Lorraine, but even her presence feels unnecessary and burdening for a film that already has too many characters and plots.

A more aware film would’ve realized that polar opposites (Cliff and Monk) getting forced to find commonality in the face of tragedy is clichéd and uninteresting, but the foundational bond between Lisa and Monk could've shown the depth of familial connections and how they strain under dire circumstances.

It’s the death knell for the movie: never thinking ahead, always in the moment, never reflecting on its prior choices before making ones that contradict them.

We can find all of its mistakes and drag them into the light. We can discuss how the two distinct sides of this flawed coin needed to more regularly inform each other to feel like including both was justified, but they never did, not even in passing. We can talk about how satire is not a side plot and that if you intend on doing it, it must be the focal point: never sidelined, relegated, backburned, or forgotten, and every deviation distracts from the most compelling ideas.

We can also address the positives. Jeffrey Wright and Tracee Ellis Ross are fantastic: they have impeccable timing together and feel like a brother and sister as entwined in mutual adoration as separated by the Grand Canyon of emotional chasms. Past the general over-familiarity, its specific handling of the familial subject matter hits many right notes; they may make us feel like different choices would have yielded superior results, but at face value, they’re executed well, if not remarkably. We can praise its disdain for modern criticism, where the very trailer-bait nonsense used to push moviegoers into seats gets raked over the coals time and time again (doubly ironic since the “stick of dynamite” line got used on a movie that is in no way, shape, or form incendiary).

Unfortunately, the movie ultimately hinges on that conversation between Monk and Gold, the one where her refusal to buckle under Monk’s indignance brings about her conclusions about Monk’s actual issue, the one he has with the people who exploit black people, not black people themselves, and that simply because her novel represents a seemingly stereotypical view doesn’t mean it isn’t rooted in truth: that truth shouldn’t get swept under the rug because it’s inconvenient. In her eyes, her novel and Fuck are entirely dissimilar, and the movie stakes its thematic life on that ideal.

Too bad she’s wrong.

It’s not the responsibility of any minority to cater to the majority, ignore the full breadth of their community to present a falsified image in the hopes of getting taken as something collectively that may not even be true of their majority. Still, she’s wrong. She did her research, yes. The narrative may be a composite of many equally authentic and truthful accounts.

Alas, as American Fiction shows us, an idea is not quality. You can read every book on a topic, watch every documentary, earn a doctorate in the field, and still reach the wrong conclusions, present your findings in a damaging way, or undermine the credibility of your work by not managing to distinguish it from the trope-driven works you seek to surpass.

The only time we hear a passage from Golden’s book is when the movie plays it for laughs. Its fans would likely argue it's all a means to establish a baseline for Monk’s indignance and that we are seeing everything from his perspective, so Golden’s comic delivery is simply us viewing it from his biased viewpoint. It’s a solid argument for anyone who cannot accept that simply because they walked into a theater ready to like a movie doesn’t mean that movie earned that adoration.

So, in the end, for all the ways American Fiction claims Monk is wrong, he’s actually right in the specific scenario in which it encases him, which is unfortunate because Golden would have a fantastic point if she wasn’t the one making it. The truth is far more nuanced than either of their perspectives believe, and the film’s refusal to work for that middle ground makes it frustrating at best and disingenuous at worst.

All in all, we have a movie that can’t decide what it wants to be, puts up an average effort at both genres it attempts, has solid performances, funny moments, a mishandling of satire, and an infuriating conclusion rooted in a total misunderstanding of the nuanced social issues at play.

In other words, it had “potential,” but in this case, it’s not a critic not being happy with what’s in front of them. It’s the thing in front of them simply not being good enough.