Capitalism may have its benefits, but there are plenty who suffer under the systems it creates. How people look and dress is a commodity, and those with power, money, and influence decide how much something is worth, often pricing the very people who want desperately to emulate them out entirely. I Love Boosters targets this phenomenon through a highly satirical lens that only Boots Riley, delivering his follow-up to Sorry to Bother You, could conceive and make.
Corvette (Keke Palmer), Sade (Naomi Ackie), and Mariah (Taylour Paige) are the Velvet Gang, notorious for shoplifting large quantities of clothes and reselling them in the Bay Area. Corvette idolizes Christie Smith (Demi Moore), the high-powered head of Metro Designers, but when Smith belittles the Gang after they target one of her stores, they step up their operation with the help of Jianpu (Poppy Liu), determined to make a dent in her business and a broader statement about wealth and commercialism in the process.
It’s not really possible to describe exactly what Riley is doing here, only to compare it to his first film as even more outrageous. Some bits are visually hilarious, like Corvette walking out of a store looking like a sumo wrestler with countless clothes stuffed into what she’s wearing, Mariah being able to lighten the color of her skin when she holds her breath, and the stores only featuring a single color each month, which also applies to the dye in the hair of Will Poulter’s testy, condescending manager. Conceptually, the technology featured, a mysterious device with great power to “deconstruct” and “situationally accelerate” whatever it hits, is very much out there, but Riley finds a way to rein it all in, revealing the absurdity of everyday life through wild exaggeration in how his protagonists are able to do what they do without immediately triggering alarm bells and attention at every step.
There’s so much going on in this film, which runs just 105 minutes, that it feels like it can’t possibly all be covered. Yet rather than trying to keep it all tight and ensure that everything is fully fleshed out, Riley throws everything he possibly can at the wall, and a good deal of it sticks. He has a supernatural subplot featuring his Sorry to Bother You star LaKeith Stanfield that is almost entirely unconnected to anything else, merely another distraction for Corvette to have to contend with as she’s busy trying to focus on fighting the system. It just shows how much Riley is trying to cover, dialing up the irreverence at every opportunity to make this film an even more entrancing head trip.
Stanfield joins a stacked cast led fearlessly by Palmer, who brings so much fierce energy to this role, which requires near-constant costume changes and an ability to embrace whatever comes her way. Ackie and Paige balance her out with different kinds of crazy, and Moore is clearly having a blast chewing scenery as this film’s supervillain. There are other faces in the cast, like Eiza González, who contribute to the whole experience, which expands from California to take on global worker rights and other ethical issues.
There is a beat to this film that starts up instantly and never lets up, with Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner of Tune-yards deserving of enormous credit for creating an anthem that even days after screening this film is hard to forget. This film remains remarkably grounded for a story whose primary goal is to spiral chaotically out of control, and every big swing feels purposeful and calibrated, unleashing havoc and fury upon its characters and unsuspecting viewers but backing it up with intention and a commitment to visual representation, featuring a range of colors and styles that are just as memorable as this film’s plot and dialogue. I Love Boosters is not for casual viewers who want a straightforward moviegoing experience, but for those willing to let loose and give in to what this film wants to say, it’s quite the unforgettable, immersive ride.
Movie Rating: 7/10
