It's not only utterly bereft of magic, but what it lacks it's that sense of anarchic strangeness or weirdness...

Unfortunately, Kobi Libii’s film is far too diffident and polite in its approach to leave much of a mark in the conversation about race and representation in US culture.

Despite a valiant effort from Justice Smith, the satire in The American Society of Magical Negroes feels aimless, scattered across a story that struggles to pick a meaningful direction.

Even though the sum of its parts doesn’t quite resonate with the bitterness it conjures, this furious film still delivers jolts of satire that are so painfully funny and repugnantly true they’re difficult to shake.