If the plot of American Fiction seems like a great idea for a film that’s because it was a great idea for Percival Everett’s Erasure, a 2001 novel satirizing the publishing industry’s pusillanimous method of leveraging literary fame and fortune through the gravest of compromises, and more importantly, the effects this has on one man’s mental state. Cord Jefferson’s adaptation, led by a never-better Jeffrey Wright, and possibly the best of intentions, can’t quite live up to that promise.