American Fiction (15)

★★★★ Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K Brown are marvellous in Cord Jefferson’s touching, funny dramedy. A sharp satire on Black stereotypes and the white people who love them. ~ The Independent.

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Oscar Nomination for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role Jeffrey Wright, Actor in a Supporting Role Sterling K. Brown.

American Fiction is Cord Jefferson’s hilarious directorial debut, which confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes.

Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes.

To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

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★★★★★ This comedy drama about a pretentious academic has been deservedly nominated for five Oscars. ~ The Times.

★★★★ Jefferson’s razor-sharp comedy is a joyfully barbed satire on race and writing. ~ Financial Times.

★★★★ Jefferson marries broad humour with affecting familial dysfunction and biting observations on race while Jeffrey Wright gives a knockout performance in this edgy, Oscar-nominated comedy. ~ Irish Times.

★★★★ Wright leads a note-perfect cast as an author pandering to a white appetite for Black trauma in an impressive incisive literary satire which takes no prisoners. ~ The Observer.

★★★★ Wright is marvellous in a tart comic drama that pokes fun at white stereotypes of blackness. ~ Irish Independent.

★★★★ American Fiction is a film that diagnoses the problem and presents a cure. ~ Time Out.

★★★★ Elegantly walking a line between absurdist satire and family drama, this is a clever send-up of how the broadness of Black culture gets reduced to cliché. ~ Empire.

★★★★ A superb send up of the depiction of the black experience in popular culture, in skewering stereotypes this biting satire holds a mirror up to its audience. ~ Evening Standard.

★★★★ This biting race satire will make white viewers squirm. As a struggling author who is rightfully angry at the world but also consumed by self-hatred, Jeffrey Wright has never been better.~ The i.

★★★★ Wright hits a career high in a film that’s terrifically funny, beautifully written, thoughtful, and provocative. ~ Total Film.

★★★★ An entertaining comedy collision of race, class and envy, this enjoyable meta-level adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure tackles black-victimhood stereotypes, showcasing Jeffrey Wright and Issa Rae as rival writers. ~ The Guardian.

★★★★ Absurd without ever feeling outlandish, Jefferson's film delivers cutting and insightful commentary with playful style. ~ Radio Times.