Directed by: Cord Jefferson
Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, Leslie Uggams, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Erika Alexander, Myra Lucretia Taylor, John Ortiz
Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Wright) is a professor and author who hasn't written anything of note or financial success in years. He writes about African-American studies, but no one seems interested in that. He is gobsmacked to find the biggest-selling sensation is a novel by author Sinatra Golden (Rae), based on inner-city blacks who speak more "black". Monk is infuriated that his latest works can't find publishers while authors who write books with stereotypical characters are the latest best-sellers.
Following his sister Lisa's untimely death, Monk writes a similar novel titled "My Pafology", (later renamed Fuck) which chronicles street crime in what appears to be one night. He is doing this as a joke, as therapy, as catharsis for his pent-up anger against a publishing world which doesn't care about him. He uses pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh (stating he is a wanted fugitive who must keep his identity secret to avoid arrest) and, astoundingly, Monk's book not only sells to a publisher, but he makes more money than he ever has in his life.
Monk is disgusted by this, but hey it pays for the nursing home in which he places his mother (Uggams) who is battling dementia, and he finds he can live an inauthentic life while trying to keep the fact that he wrote the book a secret. Writer-director Jefferson creates a basis for wicked satire with American Fiction that never quite escalates into anything special. Wright, who is great in just about anything he appears in, hits the right notes as the exasperated Monk, while Sterling K. Brown (as Monk's gay brother Clifford), is Wright's equal in a smaller, but no less powerful role.
But then Jefferson saddles the movie with a romance between Monk and his neighbor Coraline (Alexander) which feels tacked on and incomplete. The movie itself paints the broad strokes, but doesn't seem to have the teeth to really dig in. American Fiction works in some areas, but as a whole, it falls shy of truly terrific satire. It's a shame, because the parts are there.
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