Let me couch my review in that I grew up in Portland, Oregon and live next-door to a black family where the dad was a principal of a school and highly intelligent and his son was my age and we hung out and he too was extremely intelligent. In the 50-70's era in my part of SE Portland the population was generally Italian and Chinese. Other than my neighbors family, I didn't encounter another black person until high school in 70's and Faith was highly intelligent, kind and beautifully tall with Afro and she hung in my group of intellectuals.
So back to this movie, I find the ensemble to be accidentally chosen and Monk (who I really enjoyed in that western series with the robots) was perfect as the guilty, highly intelligent scholar, that did a ironic and bizarre in the face novel to show the dichotomy of his belief in good literature. Sterling K Brown, (who I love from this is us), was superb as the drug ridden recently outed gay! Tracie Ellis Ross as the stressed sister (who is playing yet another doctor role) was warming and realistic and faked a good death! The MOTHER also played the semi-lucid matriarch role superbly, especially the run away scene looking for the daughter. The housemaid/caregiver and surprise wedding also a nice touch to the complex family. The girlfriend too played a key piece as to showing up when Stagg won the Literary award for his shameful stereotypic junk. And Issae Rae - PERFECT in her role as the brilliant writer that clued into that "black genre" that "supposedly whites" liked - such a dichotomy - and Monk's reactiveness to her and her product - brilliantly written.
So perfect ensemble with costuming, lighting and set design representative of an intelligently middle to upper class family and all the complexities of the literary world.
The use of "recreating" the plots was brilliant from the very beginning with the old man being from that show where he's a reverend and then the ending - kind of like the clue movie but all in one movie!
Well done - dark humor - no graphic sex needed as Poor Things' Emily winning is such slam in face to some of these black actors in this film!
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