Director/Screenplay – Kobi Libii, Producers – Julia Lebedev, Kobi Libii, Angel Lopez & Eddie Vaisman, Photography – Doug Emmett, Music – Michael Abels, Visual Effects Supervisor – Emilien Lazaron, Visual Effects – Alchemy 24, Special Effects Supervisor – Jonathan Kombrinck, Production Design – Laura Fox. Production Company – Sight Unseen.
Cast
Justice Smith (Aren Mbondo), David Alan Grier (Roger), An-Li Bogan (Lizzie), Drew Tarver (Jason Monk), Aisha Hinds (Gabbard), Nicole Byer (Dede), Rupert Friend (Mick Morton), Tim Baltz (Officer Miller), Michaela Watkins (Linda Masterson), Gillian Vigman (Andrea)
Plot
Aren Mbondo is having no luck trying to make it as an artist. At an exhibition, he fails to make any sales and is informed that his solo upcoming exhibition has been cancelled. Afterwards, he is approached by Roger who was working as a barman at the event. Roger offers Aren a job and takes him to a meeting of the American Society of Magical Negroes out the back of a barber shop. There Aren learns of a secret society of African Americans who have magical powers. The society exists to ease white discomfort and make white people feel at ease therefore reducing racial tension and violence against blacks. After seeing these powers in action, Aren agrees to an assignment – that of befriending Jason Monk, a programmer at Meetbox, an online site that has just drawn much flack for a facial recognition system that does not recognise black faces. Just before the assignment, Aren meets a girl Lizzie in a coffee shop and strikes up an attraction – only to then find that she is Jason’s co-worker. In between tentatively romancing Lizzie, Aren discovers that the entire success of his assignment (and future of the Society) is dependent on him putting aside his feelings for Jessie and allowing Jason to romance her.
The American Society of Magical Negroes was a directing/writing debut for Kobi Libii. Prior to this, Libii was working as an actor with parts in tv series such as Jessica Jones (2015-9) and Madam Secretary (2014-9).
Magical Negro is a term that was coined by Spike Lee. It describes a certain kind of African American character in a film who has actual or quasi-magical powers or at least wisdom and insight who has no other purpose than to come to aid white people of white people and offer insight. Lee cited examples such as The Green Mile (1999) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000). Other examples that can be pointed to might be Scatman Crothers in The Shining (1980) and Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94), to name but a handful of genre examples.
The American Society of Magical Negroes opened to a very mixed reception. The majority of critics slammed it for failing to live up to its satiric potential. It only ended up earning some $2.5 million worldwide. 99.994 percent of that came from US audiences, where the majority percentage of those were apparently African American attendees.
The central idea is played with considerable amusement. There is quite an ingenuity as we watch the idea of the society being explained to us and how placating ‘white discomfort’ leads to a lowering of racial violence. This is followed by the scene where David Alan Grier befriends a white cop (Tim Baltz) and we see the effect their magic has on him. This is a film that holds back little in making some direct punches to the whole idea of white privilege in ways that make you wince and go “did they just get away with saying that?” and applaud the film for going out on a limb.
Justice Smith is introduced to The American Society of Magical Negroes
The film makes a point of spoofing assorted previous depictions of Magical Negroes – Aisha Hinds’ introductory speech telling us the history of the Magical Negro includes scenes that replicate The Legend of Bagger Vance, albeit with pool substituted for golf, and The Green Mile. Later David Alan Grier mentions he must be off to drive about a cranky old lady, surely referencing Driving Miss Daisy (1989).
Just when The American Society of Magical Negroes starts to sink its teeth in, it does an about change (around the 30-minute point) and becomes a very different film. Here Justice Smith gets a job with the tech firm where he is given a mission to pacify white programmer Drew Tarver only for Justice to find that his attraction to the cute girl he met in the coffee shop (An-Li Bogan) is something that he must sacrifice to Drew’s romantic interest for the sake of the mission.
From this point, The American Society of Magical Negroes drops its satiric bite and becomes a love triangle film. It is essentially the basics of The Bishop’s Wife (1947) or the remake The Preacher’s Wife (1996) where a being with omniscient power is given a mission to masquerade as normal and finds himself inadvertently caught up in a love triangle. The playing out of this is a lot more banal than the satiric digs into race issues that the earlier sections deftly raised. The end the film reaches is a low key one and a very different place to the sharp satiric tone on which the film started. Things perk up slightly during the broadcast for the product launch where Justice Smith gets to deliver an impassioned speech about what it means to be a black man in modern America, but the effect is considerably undone by having three other people reacting and trying to talk over the top of him at the same time.
On the plus side, Justice Smith (who I have to keep reminding people is not one of Will Smith’s kids) has an awkward, almost robotic presence that works well for the film. After I Saw the TV Glow (2024), I am quite warming to Justice as an actor. He is well paired with An-Li Bogan who comes across as a fresh face full of sparkle.
