An impressive debut feature, Scituate-shot “American Fiction” is going to thrust Emmy award-winning director and co-writer Cord Jefferson (Netflix’s “Watchmen”) to the vanguard of new filmmakers.

Meet Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright). He’s the semi-invisible, critically well-received, far from best-selling author of fiction that gets displayed in the Black studies section of bookstores. At the same time, a younger Black writer named Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) earns laurels and more money than Monk for writing a book entitled “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto” a tome that Monk believes is a crude, stereotypical depiction of Black people. Yet, at a writers’ festival in Boston her turnout is much larger and more enthusiastic than his. “Editors want a Black book,” says Monk’s friend and agent Arthur (a fine John Ortiz). Inspired by a challenge from Arthur, Monk writes a parody of the kind of book he claims to deplore, entitled “My Pafology” (later changed) by the perhaps too cleverly-named pseudonymous Stagg R. Leigh, and, of course, it becomes a sensation, creating a feeding frenzy in the publishing world and a bidding war in the film industry.

Monk, a college professor, is horrified at first. Among other things, he has claimed that the pseudonymous Leigh is an escaped criminal on the run, and the F.B.I has gotten wind of it. While all of this is going on, Monk must come to terms with the sudden death of his OB-GYN sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), the excesses of his gay, divorced plastic surgeon brother Clifford (a scene-stealing Sterling K. Brown) and the increasing fragility of his aged and mentally-failing mother (the great Leslie Uggams). At the same time, Monk meets his South Shore neighbor Coraline (Erika Alexander), a public defense lawyer from Quincy, and his life looks much more promising and fulfilling. But Monk is lousy at relationships. How long can he sustain a charade about which he is so ambivalent?

Based on the prescient 2001 novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett, “American Fiction” gives Wright, best known as the Felix Leiter to Daniel Craig’s James Bond, a showcase for his great talent. Wright, who made his screen debut in “Presumed Innocent” (1990) and got a big bounce playing the title role in “Basquiat” (1996), has never really gotten the showcase he so dearly deserves.

“American Fiction” is close, but it is nor quite there. His Monk is an angry Black man, yes. But he’s an angry Black man with a PhD. in family of physicians, and he discovers that his sudden wealth as “Stagg. R. Leigh” has made helping his mother easier. When circumstances bring Monk and Sintara together, Monk’s rage turns into begrudging respect for an artist who has made a conscious decision to give her public what it wants. We see several (symbolic?) shots of the Red Line train crossing the Charles River. “Michael B. Jordan is circling,” Arthur tells Monk. To Monk’s chagrin, his publishing agents want him to appear on his book cover in a “do rag and tank top.”

“American Fiction,” which can be placed in the tradition of such works as the ground-breaking “Putney Swope” (1969), “Watermelon Man” (1970) and Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” (2000), is not so much about race in America as it is about race in show business and publishing. The hot, young director (Adam Brody), who has been lined up to make the film version of Monk’s book, is a Quentin Tarantino-esque figure, whose previous credits include “Plantation Annihilation.” Yes, it’s funny. But the satire wears out its welcome. Wright, however, is a treasure.

(“American Fiction” contains profanity, drug use, sexual references and violence)

“American Fiction”

Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common, Coolidge Corner theater and other suburban theaters.. Grade: B+