Review: American Fiction *****

This film absolutely deserves its best picture nomination. It is about a black Harvard-educated professor whose books don’t sell very well. He sees that what sells is “da hood,” with lots of dialect and violence. It takes him a while, but he decides to write what he considers a parody of the genre, and gives it to his agent as if it were a “real” book. So, of course, he gets offered a six-figure advance and a six-figure movie deal, even after changing the title to a four-letter anglo saxon term for… well, you can guess.

Every actor in this film is good; Jeffrey Wright is amazing. It is nice to see Leslie Uggams working again. The script is funny and clever, poking fun at disgusting stereotyping without  being preachy. The ending is a clever twist.

I am sure it will be streaming soon, but I recommend you run, don’t walk, to a real movie theater. I mean, it’s not Oppenheimer, which demands to be seen on a big screen; it’s a comedy that deserves to be seen with other people laughing.

One more thing: thank heavens it wasn’t written by a white guy, It’s based on the novel Erasure by African-American author Percival Evertt, and adapted and directed by bi-racial Cord Jefferson. As I used to say to my  daughters, its got your artsy and your fartsy.

Ferrari should win best picture, but that will difficult since it wasn’t nominated.