Metacritic reviews

The sly beauty of The American Society of Magical Negroes is that it’s a wicked satire of white people that’s also an empathetic satire of Black people.

The American Society of Magical Negroes is a gracious work that both shows and critiques the very nature of humility.

The ending is simultaneously satisfying and slyly subversive, allowing an unravelling of ideas that should lead audiences to think about what they have watched.

Even with its faults, though, “Magical Negroes” is sure to spark meaningful and needed conversations around race among the audiences reflected in the film. At the very least, Libii shows that he is witty and adept enough as a director to continue working in his craft.

At its best, the film skewers the potentially eye-rolling concept of white fragility with visual panache and wit.

[An] unevenly written but good-looking directorial debut that gradually runs out of steam.

A socially conscious romantic comedy, and if those two modes don’t sound compatible, [writer/director] Libii does nothing to alter that impression.

American Society can’t decide whether to go full biting satire or charming rom-com, and as a result, it fails to do either genre justice.

Ultimately, The American Society of Magical Negroes is a film bogged down by its filmmaker’s inability to make the central joke work. The film simply is what it is satirizing: way too concerned with how white people perceive Blackness to the detriment of every single Black character in the film.

It lacks form, edge, politics, coherency, and the grand vision necessary for vast world building. It’s a film that begins on volatile ground only to tumble down a tonally rocky hill before settling on a conclusion so emotionally dissonant that its clang rings louder than the minor laughs the film engenders during its bloated run time.