Boots Riley’s 2018 debut feature Sorry to Bother You felt like somebody detonating a cartoon bomb directly into the middle of late-stage capitalism. It was loud, hilarious, abrasive, politically furious, and so deeply committed to its own wavelength that it practically dared audiences to either surrender to it or reject it outright. Thankfully, eight years later, Riley hasn’t sanded down a single edge with his long-awaited sophomore feature, I Love Boosters. If anything, he’s doubled down on every maximalist instinct he has as a filmmaker, resulting in a movie that feels even more screwball, more overstuffed, more visually overwhelming, and somehow even more charming because of it.
Set inside a heightened consumerist dystopia where fashion functions as religion and workers are crushed beneath the weight of endless exploitation, the film follows Corvette (a phenomenal Keke Palmer), a struggling fashion designer who survives by boosting expensive designer goods alongside her crew, Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige). Together, they’re known as the Velvet Gang. Corvette is the brilliant, stylish, and charismatic leader. She’s also deeply lonely, living out of a closed-down chicken shop while desperately chasing the dream of becoming a legitimate designer herself. Riley immediately frames her as both sympathetic underdog and deeply flawed hustler, which makes her an endlessly compelling lead to follow through this lunatic world.
Visually, this movie is absolutely bursting at the seams. Every frame explodes with massive colors, exaggerated production design courtesy of Christopher Glass (Ms. Marvel, The Jungle Book), absurdly outstanding costumes (designer Shirley Kurata making an early case for the Oscar), and heightened slapstick energy. Cinematographer Natasha Braier (The Neon Demon, Honey Boy) shoots the film almost like a live-action cartoon, with astounding visual gags littering every scene. The fictional Metro Designers has stores that each operate entirely in monochromatic palettes, meaning customers literally have to travel to different locations depending on what color clothing they want. Christie Smith (a prickly Demi Moore), the eccentric fashion mogul Corvette idolizes and eventually grows to despise, lives inside a gravity-defying condo that looks like it was designed by somebody having a nervous breakdown during art school finals. Nothing in this movie really obeys realism, and it’s all the better for it.
Riley weaponizes surrealism as satire the same way he did in Sorry to Bother You and his limited series I’m a Virgo, constantly throwing ridiculous imagery at the audience until the absurdity becomes recognizable. One recurring gag involves Corvette being pursued by a giant rolling ball of eviction notices and other anxiety-inducing bills. Elsewhere, the film suddenly detours into grotesque supernatural horror imagery, bizarre stop-motion sequences, narrated flashbacks, and physics-defying physical comedy that escalates into outright cartoon insanity. Some of these bits absolutely kill. Others can kinda fall flat. Riley clearly does not care either way, and that reckless commitment eventually becomes part of the movie’s appeal.
The soundtrack from Tune-Yards gives the entire movie this rich, bouncy momentum that keeps the chaos energized even when the narrative threatens to spiral completely out of control. Meanwhile, the supporting cast fully understands the assignment. Don Cheadle is hysterical as a fraudulent self-help cult leader running what is an obvious pyramid scheme. Will Poulter is fantastic as an aggressively soulless Metro Designers manager who gives his employees thirty-second lunch breaks. Eiza González nearly steals the show as a vaping labor organizer, while LaKeith Stanfield appears like some romantic mirage every time Corvette encounters him, the movie visually framing him almost like a fantasy projection.
Narratively, I Love Boosters eventually reveals itself as this massive anti-capitalist conspiracy story involving labor exploitation, consumer manipulation, and culture manufacturing on a systemic level. Like Sorry to Bother You or Juel Taylor’s similarly-wavelengthed They Cloned Tyrone, the film peels back layer after layer until society itself starts feeling like one gigantic corporate hallucination. One especially memorable subplot involves Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a Chinese sweatshop worker armed with a sci-fi gadget that begins stealing Metro Designers products en masse before sending them back overseas. It’s ridiculous, overcomplicated, and somehow perfectly aligned with the movie’s “throw absolutely everything at the wall” philosophy.
That approach can create problems. The film is incredibly wordy at times, occasionally burying its ideas beneath long-winded explanations and nonstop exposition dumps. Certain jokes stretch far too long. Entire sections feel like Riley refusing to cut a single idea from the screenplay, whether it fully works or not. The pacing can become exhausting during stretches because the movie never really slows down long enough to breathe. Yet even when the film stumbles, there’s still something undeniably exciting about watching a filmmaker swing this hard.
By the time the movie erupts into its completely gonzo chase / mass labor strike finale, Riley has essentially pushed the film beyond the boundaries of conventional satire entirely. The ending lands because underneath all the absurdity, Corvette finally realizes she isn’t alone. The Velvet Gang, the exploited workers, the people crushed beneath the machine - they only become powerful once they recognize each other. For all its chaos and cartoon insanity, the movie ultimately arrives at a surprisingly sincere sense of solidarity.
Not everything in I Love Boosters works. Honestly, large chunks of it probably shouldn’t work at all. But Riley’s fearless commitment to originality and political absurdism makes the film impossible to dismiss. In an era where so much mainstream filmmaking feels painfully focus-grouped into lifelessness, there’s something exhilarating about a movie this wildly creative and unapologetically strange. You may not love every second of it, but you’re certainly never going to confuse it for anything else.
‘I Love Boosters’ is now playing in theaters.
