'American Fiction' review: Jeffrey Wright anchors race, media satire

Jeffrey Wright gets a role he can really burrow into in "American Fiction," writer-director Cord Jefferson's comic-drama that acts as both a critique of race and the media and a warm story of modern family. It works better as the latter, but Wright is a steady presence throughout, lending the film a gravitas it might not achieve without him.

Wright plays Thelonious Ellison, a college professor and struggling author whom everyone calls "Monk" as a play off that other Thelonious. Monk, a first-rate crank and misanthrope, is placed on leave from his university after a charged interaction with a White student who is upset over his use of the N-word, which shows the sly slant of Jefferson's sense of humor.

The break gives Monk time to visit his family in Boston, including his mother, Agnes (Leslie Uggams), who is in the early stages of dementia. He's also given time with his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) and his erratic brother Cliff (an on-fire Sterling K. Brown), while they iron out family differences and figure out what to do with Mom. While home, Monk falls for a neighbor, Coraline (Erika Alexander, excellent), and they both cautiously figure each other out.

The slippery B-plot finds Monk becoming a literary sensation with his novel, which is given an unprintable four word title that begins with F. It's a send-up of novels that exploit a certain version of the inner-city Black experience (it's written under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh) and are in turn hailed by critics as masterworks. Except it is hailed as a masterwork, and Monk is forced to play along with its success while staying in the shadows, in a kind of hyper-reality that is at stylistic odds with the grounded center Jefferson sets up to such great effect in the other half of his story. It's like a wacky sitcom continuously bumping up against a credible, earthbound story.

The literary and race critique might play better if Jefferson gave it some real teeth, or really went for the jugular. (Spike Lee covered similar ground in 2000's "Bamboozled," and didn't pull any punches.) But the family aspects of the story are so well done that it balances "American Fiction," and Jefferson creates characters and situations that are as real and refreshing as his satire targets are cartoonish.

Wright, so often a strong supporting player in projects from "Westworld" to "Angels in America," is magnetic in the lead role: commanding, flawed, vulnerable, relatable. "American Fiction" is his movie, and will likely (and deservedly) land him his first Oscar nomination.

The strong supporting cast is also commendable, from veteran character actor John Ortiz as Monk's agent to Issa Rae, who plays a competing author and colleague, to a hysterical, scene-stealing Brown. Jefferson, an Emmy winning writer (for "Watchmen"), establishes himself as a filmmaker to watch, even if he stumbles in bringing the story to a close. Either way, "American Fiction" is a promising debut and a fine piece of American storytelling.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'American Fiction'

GRADE: B

Rated R: for language throughout, some drug use, sexual references and brief violence

Running time: 117 minutes

At the Maple Theater