Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The American Society of Magical Negroes’ on Amazon Prime Video, an Unfocused Sociopolitical Satire Led by Justice Smith

The American Society of Magical Negroes ( now streaming on Amazon Prime Video ) takes a phrase and concept coined by Spike Lee and turns it into a movie. That sounds like an inspired idea, satirizing the movie trope of the “Magical Negro,” where Black supporting characters exist to help White protagonists better themselves and overcome conflict. The film, Kobi Libii’s directorial debut, even on-the-nose references films boasting said trope, The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Green Mile , as it sets up a Harry Potter esque underground society of Black folk whose jobs are to befriend White people and make them comfortable, and casts Justice Smith ( I Saw the TV Glow ) as a new recruit. Whether or not Libii can execute the concept coherently is the question, though.

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The Gist: We meet Aren (Smith) as he walks through an art gallery full of White people. Awkwardly. Very awkwardly. He says “I’m sorry” about 300 times and shows all the self-confidence of a leaf being tossed hither and yon by a whimsical breeze. He knits textile sculptures made out of yarn, and stands uncomfortably next to his work as patrons cock an eyebrow at it and ask, “Is that yarn?” (My question is, “Is that art good ?”, and the answer seems to be, well, kinda, no.) Adding insult to injury, one of the prospective art buyers – who’s Caucasian of course – assumes Aren is a waiter, and instead of correcting the guy, Aren shrugs and fetches him another drink.

It’s therefore obvious that Aren is living life with frustrating passiveness. Just as he blunders into a Bad Optics situation involving a drunk White girl, her debit card and an ATM, Roger (David Alan Grier) swoops in and saves him with what appears to be either high-level sleight-of-hand or outright wizardry. The latter of which turns out to be true, since Roger can blink and teleport himself and others like he’s in a remake of Bewitched . He ushers Aren through a secret door in the back of a barbershop and recruits him for The American Society of Magical Negroes, so he can be trained in the art of feeding corny platitudes and down-homey metaphors to troubled White people and making them feel better – and therefore, the Society head explains, diminishing violence against Black people. Society members can use a White Tears Meter to gauge the emotional volatility of a client. “The happier they are, the safer we are” is one of the Society’s core tenets.

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And so Aren is assigned to an upward-failing doofus named Jason (Drew Tarver), a designer at MeetBox, a Facebookish social media company whose office seems to have more Lego tables and juice bars than actual workstations. Aren is supposed to help Jason get the promotion he doesn’t deserve but thinks he deserves, and let it be known that Jason isn’t outwardly malevolent, but he’s definitely kind of a moron. Conflict arises when their coworker Lizzie (An-Li Bogan) arrives to love-triangle the hell out of everything: Jason likes her but she has real chemistry with Aren. So Aren has to engineer the situation in Jason’s favor, and set aside his own feelings for her. If he doesn’t, he’ll break the Society rules and all heck will break loose and he’ll get his memory wiped and be banished. And then what? Go back to making crummy yarn art? It seems so.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You trafficked in similar satire, albeit far more effectively.

Performance Worth Watching: I’m warming to Smith’s sincerity and sensitivity in films like I Saw the TV Glow , Detective Pikachu and this; he feels like a rising star.

Memorable Dialogue: Aren sums up the love triangle succinctly: “He kinda colonized my crush.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: This movie about one guy’s identity issues has some identity issues of its own. It vacillates between spoofing racial politics and social-media tech companies (which ranges from withering to gratingly obvious), and the earnest romance between Aren and Lizzie (which, frustratingly, never gets any traction). The other issue is, isn’t the concept of the Magical Negro a bit dated? Sure, it still turns up in tone-deaf dreck like Where the Crawdads Sing and Green Book , but its relevance feels trumped by the Everything that’s happened during the pandemic era. And even though the concept is ripe for comedy, it’s too often a simplistic exercise, leading up to a big speechy exhortation from a protagonist who’s written so shallow, he never shows enough depth of substance to justify his earning such a meaningful revelation.

Libii seems to be trying to keep the tone light, but ends up indulging bits that feel like stuff cut out of a Taika Waititi script: “Live laugh love” jokes, gags about Magical Negroes helping White guys with erectile dysfunction, caricatures of clueless billionaires who read Ayn Rand. Some of it hits (“It’s got to be nostalgic, but it can’t be too ‘sharecropper’,” is one line of instruction for Magical Negroes in training), but more of it misses, and its rom-com dalliances feel underdeveloped and out of place, but also strangely vital to the story, which tells us the screenplay needs a stronger edit for its myriad styles, ideas and tones to coalesce. As it stands, The American Society of Magical Negroes mostly hangs there like one of Aren’s textile pieces: Odd but not intriguing, inspired in places, a bit confusing.

Our Call: I feel something of value in this idea, as executed by this cast, but the end result is undercooked. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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