Boots Riley is a loud artist. He’s loud in his visual approach to storytelling, crafting gloriously chaotic collages of color and mixed media, running the gamut from stop-motion animation and practical effects to in-camera stunt work and idiosyncratic original soundtracks. And he’s loud in his rhetoric. Riley’s incendiary 2018 feature directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You, is a radical examination of the intersection of race, class, and capitalism, raucously unfurling via the story of a Black telemarketer (played by LaKeith Stanfield) who struggles at his job until he adopts a “white voice,” which brings him oodles of financial and social success at a high moral cost.
Riley’s second feature, I Love Boosters, fast proves itself to be a comedy with a similarly strong anti-capitalist point of view. Set in a sort of alternate reality version of San Francisco, the narrative revolves around the Velvet Gang, a trio of Black women dubbed “boosters.” Essentially, they— Corvette (Keke Palmer), Sade (Naomi Ackie), and Mariah (Taylour Paige)— steal clothes from Metro Designers (a chain of fast fashion stores run by Demi Moore’s deliciously ruthless designer and entrepreneur Christie Smith) and resell them at a third of the retail price. In their view, they are performing a community service: providing high-end items to their community at an affordable cost, while turning a profit for themselves. At one point, the girls all get jobs at one Metro Designers store, managed by Grayson (a hysterically exacting Will Poulter), with the intent to pull a heist there. But before they can, collide with Jianhu (Poppy Liu), who uses a strange device to suck up all the clothing in the store instantly. Jianhu later explains that she works in the Chinese factory that makes all of Metro Designer’s clothing, and that her family members have become fatally ill after inhaling particles while sandblasting denim. When she and her coworker discovered that the company invented a teleporting device that would save on shipping costs, she stole it to use as leverage to demand better pay and working conditions for herself and her fellow workers.
Like Sorry to Bother You, I Love Boosters is a wildly imaginative mishmash of sci-fi and satire. This is a film that sees Palmer’s Corvette constantly chased by an enormous rolling ball comprised of eviction notices and debt reminders; she lives in a derelict chicken restaurant, but she dreams of being a successful fashion designer— like Christie (who a scene that finds Corvette sneaking into her luxury apartment by hiding in an espresso cart suggests she still admires), but with a conscience. Riley communicates his characters’ fears and desires through obvious, but clever, imagery. This includes the aforementioned ball of debt, and the structurally slanted high rise that Christie resides in. Christie strides across the steep diagonal floors with ease, but Corvette can barely take two steps before she falls back down again; she literally cannot get her footing in this world. We later discover that Christie stole one of Corvette’s designs that she entered in a contest and lost, a nod at how industries often steal from and profit off of Black artists without giving them credit.
Those are just a couple of the many ideas Riley throws around in I Love Boosters. But unfortunately, he doesn’t appear as interested in the humanity of his characters beyond their role in promoting his politics or extrapolating on the intricacies of teleportation and deconstruction. As funny and entertaining and righteous as the film is, that lack of intimacy is glaring. What’s frustrating is that Riley’s script does try to ground itself in some sense of real human connection and feeling. At the very start of the film, Corvette voices how lonely she is; it’s what prompts Sade to take her to a meeting with Dr. Jack (a virtually unrecognizable Don Cheadle), a life coach who’s actually running a pyramid scheme out of a furniture store after hours. It could also be what inexplicably pushes her toward a potential romance with a mysterious man who keeps approaching her (played by Stanfield, and credited only as Pinky Ring Guy), even as she resists the distraction. Corvette’s drive also starts to impact the community she already has; Sade, for instance, just wants some money to help give her kids a better future, and doesn’t necessarily want to risk taking a bigger stand. But these beats are all very disjointed. Riley so commits to the frenetic pace of his story that he rarely pauses to let the characters give space to these feelings, and believably communicate them to the audience. Corvette may say that she’s lonely, but we don’t witness the solitude or yearning that accompanies the isolation that can sit deep in your bones even when you’re with other people. All of her expressions of her hopes and dreams and insecurities read as flippant remarks, not sincere declarations.
That’s a noticeable flaw throughout I Love Boosters, one that it attempts to mask with its vibrant stylistic choices. That, at least, is both impressive and wondrous to behold, from the bold primary colors employed in the costuming and production design to the unorthodox score by Riley’s band Tune-Yards which matches the frenzied pace of the film, and no more so than the film’s climax, a marvelous collision of miniatures and stop-motion work. It isn’t that the film is entirely devoid of digital effects, but Riley and his crew’s commitment to the tangible, and their deft melding of the two so that they effectively work hand-in-hand, is admirable. The cast is just as remarkable. Palmer more than carries the film with her confident intelligence and sense of humor, but she’s just as much a core part of an ensemble. The boosters play off each other with such ease, the film almost leaves you wanting to see more adventures with them. Moore throws herself into her villain role with gusto, and I haven’t even mentioned Eiza González’s Violeta, the radicalized Metro Designer employee who leads the charge for workers’ rights. All the pieces of I Love Boosters may not perfectly fit together, but they each convey the creative breadth of a singular artist at work.
I Love Boosters is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 113 minutes. Rated R.
Katie at the Movies 