The Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Mag­i­cal Negroes review – an under­cooked, frus­trat­ing satire

In 2001, film­mak­er Spike Lee, frus­trat­ed with the heaps of Hol­ly­wood movies with depth­less black char­ac­ters writ­ten with lit­tle pur­pose oth­er than to mys­ti­cal­ly aid their white co-stars, coined the term ​“Mag­i­cal Negro”. One film that par­tic­u­lar­ly stoked Lee’s ire was The Green Mile, in which a black pris­on­er on death row mirac­u­lous­ly cures a white guard of his sick­ness. In his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Kobi Libii takes inspi­ra­tion from Lee’s crit­i­cism, even pok­ing fun at The Green Mile; how­ev­er, in 100 drea­ry min­utes, he says lit­tle oth­er than the fact that this trope exists – some­thing Lee already did 23 years ago.

The Soci­ety of Mag­i­cal Negroes opens in a gallery, where Aren (Jus­tice Smith), a skit­tish bira­cial artist, is unable to cap­ti­vate the most­ly white vis­i­tors with his craft. Instead of being apa­thet­ic towards those neglect­ing his art, Aren becomes servile, even apolo­getic. This catch­es the atten­tion of the epony­mous Soci­ety, a clan­des­tine group that recruits black peo­ple just to keep white peo­ple hap­py. Aren is thus brought on board to be one of their mag­i­cal Negroes.

After Aren comes to terms with his respon­si­bil­i­ties as the newest mem­ber of the soci­ety, the film’s provoca­tive premise becomes con­signed to its periph­ery as it meta­mor­phoses into a half-baked rom-com with Aren falling for Lizzie (An-Li Bogan), a co-work­er of Jason (Drew Tarv­er), a mil­len­ni­al tech-bro he is assigned to assist. Although whole­some, thanks to a cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mance by Bogan, this does lit­tle to devel­op on the film’s cen­tral the­sis. If any­thing, it does the oppo­site, as it’s Aren’s fas­ci­na­tion with Lizzie, a white girl, that sets into motion the events that push him to find his own voice.

Mean­while, the soci­ety repeat­ed­ly tells Aren that he needs to walk a tightrope between being ​“authen­ti­cal­ly black” and ​“accept­able to white peo­ple”, lit­er­al­ly etch­ing these words onto a board at the society’s head­quar­ters. Yet there’s no point in the movie where Libii shows us what this entails. All Aren does is con­tin­u­ous­ly mas­sage Jason’s ego by vol­un­tar­i­ly los­ing to him at table ten­nis games or prais­ing his work despite Jason’s evi­dent incom­pe­tence. He inter­nalis­es his dis­com­fort, which only man­i­fests after Jason asks Aren to help him get with Lizzie.

Libii does rehash some of Lee’s crit­i­cisms of Hol­ly­wood through some sharp – albeit over-the-top – one-lin­ers. He explores, through Jason’s enti­tle­ment, notions of white priv­i­lege and how cor­po­ra­tions try to divert from crises through diver­si­ty hires; how­ev­er, he does not com­mit to a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis or even take a posi­tion. It’s dif­fi­cult to under­stand what Libii wants to say; his com­men­tary remains aim­less, and for every joke that hits, twice as many miss.

At var­i­ous points, the film seems to be on the verge of some­thing riv­et­ing. There is a scene where the ten­sion between Aren and Jason sim­mers to a boil­ing point after an uncom­fort­able back-and-forth, only for it to invari­ably fiz­zle out. This is only com­pound­ed by the movie’s wonky pac­ing, ema­nat­ing from a cliché-rid­den script that leans too hard into con­trivance; and its sim­plis­tic film­mak­ing, which is almost entire­ly com­prised of medi­um shots with way too many abrupt cutaways. 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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