The American Society of Magical Negroes is a social satire with a good idea but a wobbly presentation. I certainly appreciate the satirical takedown of the old magical negro film trope but I felt it unevenly poked and prodded. Plus it has a separate romance that made me wish I was just watching that instead.

The film is about a young black artist played by Justice Smith who is recruited into the Society of Magical Negroes. It’s taking on the movie trope of the magical black man who show up to help the white protagonist… like in The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Green Mile, Driving Miss Daisy, etc.

The problem with this film is not in its core conceit but in its implementation of it. I have zero problem taking to task the magical negro trope, but they got it all confused by trying to set the trope in the real world. This trope exists in movies only… so suggesting this is a common thing in reality to mock the movie trope is just weird to me. I’m probably being too analytical about it, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a conceptual problem for my nerd brain.

And yet there are some very solid jokes and satire in the film. Some genuinely ha-ha funny (laughed at the shark gag) and some pretty good take-downs of race relations and power dynamics. The inner angry black man trope faces off with the magical negro trope with a lot of white guy satire thrown into the mix.

And all that is one thing, but the film also has a very sweet, funny, and charming romance between Justice Smith and An Li Bogan. I think their work together is so good, I wished it was in its own dopey romantic comedy that wasn’t burdened by the social satire.

I enjoyed quite a bit of this film but I can’t deny its messy and needed some rewrites. I’d have liked them to take on this trope in a more fantastical or even more grounded way, but not in the half-way they picked. I enjoyed the two leads and wanted more of them… and I generally laughed enough to admire most of the humor.

Score: 78