Film Review

American Fiction (2023) — hilarious satire meets a moving family drama

A novelist fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

Emmy-winning writer Cord Jefferson (Watchmen, The Good Place) makes his directorial debut with American Fiction, based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, a scathing satire that skewers racism, white neoliberalism, publishing industry exploitation, and Hollywood hypocrisy. Yet, amidst the biting humour, this film emerges as one of the year’s most poignant family dramas, finding moments of tenderness even in the face of harsh realities.

When Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), an author struggling to sell his books on mythology, gets tired of the US publishing industry profiting from “Black” entertainment, his publisher sells his “drunken joke” novel of African American stereotypes under a pseudonym and is thrust right into the heart of the hypocrisy, exploitation, and…