American Fiction

2023 Amazon MGM Studios

Rated: R

Length: 1 hr 57min

Comedy ~ Drama

Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Erika Alexander, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.

“You said you wanted Black stuff. What’s blacker than that? It’s got deadbeat Dads, Rappers, crack and he gets killed by a cop in the end. I mean, that’s Black, right?”

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is a writer and college professor who is frustrated by not getting his latest novel published. Seeing the success of Sinatra Golden with her stereotypical book about inner city women complete with ghetto slang, he decides to write a novel under the pseudonym Stagg R Leigh titled “My Pafology” using every cliché possible.

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? I saw a lot of today’s world in this movie. And the whole dysfunctional family thing……wow, I think we can all relate. And who isn’t sick and tired of trying to do good things, be the best at what they can be…and watch somebody else excel and win with mediocrity.

Watching Monk (Jeffrey Wright) get fed up and start writing a gangsta style story (In 3D) was hilarious and satisfying. Go Thelonius! Give it to the man. And when Monk starts acting the part over the phone to the publishers, classically hilarious. The relationships were a study onto themselves: Monk and Coraline, Monk and his mother, his sister, and his gay brother. I loved the characters and thought the actors did an awesome job.

I wasn’t crazy about the ending, it left me with questions. I don’t like movies that leave me feeling that way. I prefer closure, resolution. What about Monk’s relationship with Coraline? What really did become of people finding out Monk ain’t no fugitive gangsta, or did they? I guess Monk and his brother are riding off into the sunset with all that money and that’s that…….?