Director Cord Jefferson’s adaptation of writer Percival Everett’s novel Erasure is not so much a comedy as it is an elaborate joke on the viewer. The marketing, which must be considered here, makes the film look like a savage satire of the publishing industry: the story of a frustrated upper-middle-class Black writer who cranks out a pseudonymous thug life novel as a gag, only to see the industry ignore the joke and embrace it in earnest. Oh ho ho! The poor boobies can’t even bring themselves to object when he insists on titling it Fuck — and who could blame them? Do you want to be the white person who tells the Black person that he’s not allowed to keep it real? How delicious. But in truth, all that is a subplot, and a carelessly handled one at that; the real story is something much more conventional, much more delicate, and much more emotionally engaging: a mid-life crisis movie about a man dealing with the potent legacy of his dead father, the sad reality of his fading mother, and the affecting complexity of his sibling relationships. All set about as far from the hood as you could imagine — the love interest lives just across from his family’s beach house. It’s a sign of star Jeffrey Wright’s presence and talent that he’s able to keep the viewer from noticing the bait-and-switch until the ending, which is likely to feel like a bad Player rip-off to fans of the satire, an emotional middle-finger to fans of the family drama, and maybe, just maybe, a clever tell to those in on the joke. What did you come here looking for, people? (2023) — Matthew Lickona