But actor-turned-writer-director Kobi Libby's feature debut takes that auspicious idea as a timely satire, winds it up in a simplistic superhero plot, and turns that plot into a fairly conventional one. They are involved in a love triangle love comedy. This movie is a bit strange. It's not completely tasteless, and there are definitely some laughs, but it's overcrowded (and in this case, a little undercooked).
The real protagonist, unsurprisingly, is not Tarver's Jason, but Allen (Justice Smith), a young, aspiring visual artist who, when we meet him, is working on a thread sculpture at a group exhibition. He stands awkwardly beside you. When Allen is instructed by the dealer to woo the collector, the white art patron mistakes the mixed-race hero for a caterer and hands him an empty wine glass. This is the first of many humiliations that Allen will suffer.
Later that night, an attempt by a drunk white woman to help her use an ATM leads to accusations of robbery by the woman's boyfriend, and Allen is rescued by a mysterious black man, Roger (David Allen Grier), and scout be done. With a speech peppered with cozy “guys” and “no”s, and a hint about where to find the best pulled pork in town, Roger defuses the tense situation and offers Allen her job. Take out. He is carefully calibrated to be palatable to real blacks and whites in the film, by a titular society whose mission is not to fight crime but to monitor the global production of “white tears.” I'm hoping to make a surprise attack with some combinations. Do you comfort someone who is suffering? According to Roger, obnoxious white people can be dangerous and, in some cases, deadly. In the long run, the association's work will ultimately be about saving black lives, not subjugation to whites.
Touché, at least in theory.
However, the film's ideas about what constitutes blackness are questionable. Is Roger's rustic, abject submissiveness — a kind of racist caricature — meant to be seen as the real part, or the delicious part?
Moreover, by skewering racist clichés, “Society” ends up trafficking in a different, but equally overwrought, kind of mediocrity. Allen's first mission leads him to a scenario everyone has seen before. He and Jason both like Lizzie (Anne Lee Bogan), a coworker at MeetBox. Allen suppresses his love for her not because she's Jason's friend, but because it's literally his job. So much for life and death stakes.
The light-hearted nature of the plot perhaps befits the film's gentle comedy, which offers a few laughs here and there but rarely stings or bleeds. Smith is also a fascinating, if frustrating, hero at bantamweight. It's only towards the end that Allen shows some mettle, when she yells at Justin, “Make some space for me!” Justin said in his speech that the two were never friends because he didn't really see him. The feeling of being erased and invisible is all too common.
In a flash of Allen's satisfied anger, the “Magical Negro Society of America” momentarily becomes a reality. Otherwise, much like Allen, the film itself feels overly respectful at times. As if they were trying to make people comfortable when they should be making them squirm at least a little.
It's tempting to compare this film to “American fiction,” as both films critique the stale and whitewashed racial narratives in our culture. But the difference here is that “society” too often panders to the very impulses it seeks to satirize.
PG13. at area theaters. Contains strong language, thought-provoking content, and mature thematic elements. 104 minutes.