From Ryan Cordaro

Let’s start off with a little history lesson. In 2001, while he was touring different college campuses and giving lectures, Spike Lee spoke about a trope in Hollywood that he wasn’t a giant fan of: the “magical Negro.” Lee specifically pointed out the movies The Green Mile and The Legend of Bagger Vance in these lectures, but other movies like The Shining and The Matrix feature this trope. I just wanted to throw out that this trope has been around for a while, but if I were to recommend something shorter, there’s a great Key & Peele sketch that makes fun of this trope.

The American Society of Magical Negroes, though, is flipping the trope on its head. Written and directed by first time writer-director Kobi Libii, we follow Aren, a young man who’s recruited into a secret society of magical Black people that has only one goal: make the lives of White people more comfortable. While there’s admittedly not too much on the rest of the plot, I’m welcome to the idea of this sort of satire. It’s something that could be funny in the right hands, but I admittedly did think of the Key & Peele skit when looking over what this was about. There’s some elements in there that I didn’t expect, not exactly in the good way, but I’m open to see how this ends up.

The cast of The American Society of Magical Negroes includes Justice Smith (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the upcoming I Saw the TV Glow), David Alan Grier (The Color Purple, They Cloned Tyrone), An-Li Bogan (After Yang), Drew Tarver (The Other Two, the upcoming Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story), Michaela Watkins (The Way Back, You Hurt My Feelings), Aisha Hinds (9-1-1, Godzilla: King of the Monsters), Tim Baltz (The Righteous Gemstones, Drunk History), Rupert Friend (Asteroid City, Homeland), and Nicole Byer (Nailed It!, the upcoming Thelma).

The American Society of Magical Negroes premieres at Sundance this weekend and is set to release on March 22nd, 2024.

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