Justice Smith
Aren
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Fantasy
Comedy
A young man, Aren, is recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who dedicate their lives to a cause of utmost importance: making white people’s lives easier.
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| Homepage | https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-american-society-of-magical-negroes |
|---|---|
| Release Date | 2024-03-15 |
| Runtime | 1h 45m |
| Directors | Kobi Libii, Doug Emmett, Micheal Edward King |
| Producers | Julia Lebedev, Kobi Libii, Eddie Vaisman, Angel Lopez, Mike Upton, Oren Moverman, Leonid Lebedev |
| Writer | Kobi Libii |
I think that for satire to work, you have to be able to ensure that the audience is on board with the underlying premiss it's trying to achieve. Despite a decent effort from Justice Smith's "Aren" (and his impressive collection of knitwear) I just wasn't. Relying on long forgotten (if, indeed, they were ever actually known in the first place) tropes about racial stereotyping - and not just those from an African American point of view, makes this actually quite an offensive film to watch. Perhaps I am overthinking it, but I found absolutely nothing here with which I could relate - sarcastically or otherwise. The comedy, such as it is, is entirely contrived and the romantic elements between "Aren", "Lizzie" (An-Li Bogan) and "Jason" (Drew Tarver) are badly written and frequently cringe-makingly acted out. Peppering the thing with a few "Harry Potter" style magical effects and adding the benign characterisation of "Barber" (Aaron Colman) so that this "Society" can spend their entire time trying to "fix" the problems of their hapless and hopelessly out of their emotional depth white contemporaries just falls flat. It simply isn't funny. If a load of white folk got together and decided to make a movie about a group of innately obsequious and subservient non-white people, it would (and should) be banned. This is a clumsy and unfunny reinforcement of flawed values seen from an wholly unrealistic perspective and I struggled to sit through it, then wondered just why I bothered. Maybe it will resonate if you are American? I hope not.
— CinemaSerf