Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright, delivering a knockout performance) is a Los Angeles-based academic and the author of unpopular literary novels who finds himself in hot water when a triggered white student objects to racism in the material he’s teaching. Monk’s agent, meanwhile, is dismayed by his latest manuscript: it’s simply not black enough.
The outraged protagonist retreats to his family home, where his ailing, Alzheimer-diagnosed mother (Leslie Uggams), estranged siblings (Tracee Ellis Ross and Sterling K Brown) and lots of unpacked emotional baggage await. “Genius can’t connect with the rest of us” neatly encapsulates the hero’s return. Coraline (Erika Alexander), a quick-witted neighbour and potential romantic interest, provides another complication.
Enraged by a literary world that shelves his novels in ethnicised sections, and dismayed by the popularity of his fellow author Sintara Golden’s best-selling We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, Monk bangs out a satirical black epic that ticks all the boxes: crime, drugs, gang violence and a deadbeat dad.
Unhappily, his Swiftian proposal is immediately embraced by his agent and a wider public.
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As his fragile home life implodes, Monk finds himself posing as Stagg R Leigh, fugitive author of My Pafology, for the benefit of circling Hollywood executives keen to snap up the rights for a life-changing sum. There is much fun to be had watching the stately Shakespeare veteran Wright awkwardly assuming a ‘hood persona.
Adapted from Erasure, Percival Everett’s 2001 novel, this season’s edgiest comedy arrives with richly deserved Oscar nominations for Wright and Brown, not to mention for best picture and best adapted screenplay. Writer and director Cord Jefferson, who previously made episodes of Watchmen and The Good Life, marries a light touch and broad humour with affecting familial dysfunction and biting observations on race. Cultural crises are seldom so entertaining.
