Movie Review: American Fiction

The new movie “American Fiction” is different and highly unusual. However, unlike the recent garbage movies “Poor Things”, “Eileen”, and last year’s horrific “Everything Everywhere All At Once” this film is different good, not different horrible. 

Jeffrey Wright plays Monk Ellison who is a college professor and frustrated writer, who for years has failed to publish or make money as an author, despite the highly intelligent quality novels he has written. As a black author, Monk is frustrated because it seems that the wealthy white publishers that always reject his work, want a "black novel". A book that has foul language and violent themes, or as they called it, "a black book". Monk's integrity as an author always prevented him from writing a book like this, just to make money, but due to recent financial issues with his mother, who now needs to live in an adult care center, as a joke, Monk writes a black book, filled with crime, murder, and bad language. Much to Monk's surprise as well as his publisher Arthur played by John Ortiz, Monk's book, written as a lark, becomes a huge hit with a publisher that always rejected his previous books. Monk writes this book with a fake name and even puts out a news report that he is an on-the-run fugitive, who committed a crime that was never revealed. This adds even more interest to this novel, which shows very well the insanity of social media and comparing anything that has great quality as opposed to something that is popular at the moment, and all about making money.

There are numerous side stories in this screenplay, including Monk’s sister Lisa Ellison, played by Tracee Ellis Ross, and his brother Clifford played by Sterling K. Brown. It was good to see Sterling K. Brown in arguably his first good movie role since the end of the outstanding TV series “This is Us”. Monk’s mother is played by singer/actor Leslie Uggams, who still has a prolific acting career at age 79.

This story has a very unusual ending, something never seen before, where alternate ideas are proposed to a movie producer Wiley Valdespino played by Adam Brody. Once again, in order to be different in any movie, there is no need to be completely insane, which unfortunately seems to be a new and idiotic trend with some recent bad movies.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for American Fiction are a very high 93%, with my rating a high 88% and firm recommendation.