AFTER his initial film debut, Sorry to Bother You, and his two decade plus career as a musician, producer, and activist, director Boots Riley returns with his latest audacious work, I Love Boosters. This maximalist social satire takes aim at a litany of buzzy topics, including but certainly not limited to capitalism, exploitative labor practices, and the mainstream media machine. Unfortunately, between the deluge of colors, costumes, and commentary I Love Boosters struggles to go much deeper than its admittedly very charming façade.
I Love Boosters follows our lead, Corvette (Keke Palmer), as she guides the Velvet Gang, including Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), on a luxury fashion shoplifting crusade. Or fashion-forward philanthropy as they would put it. Their target? Fashion mogul and Metro Designer CEO, Christie Smith (Demi Moore). Her crime? Exploitative overseas labor and stealing Corvette’s outfit design from a company hosted contest (notably, the outfit theft does come long after the formation of the gang itself). If you know what Boots Riley is all about, then you know the story spirals from there. Sci-fi doohickies, portals, skin-walkers, and various forms of time travel all start to take center stage and drive the narrative ever more erratically into the frenzied climax.
In terms of craft, Boots Riley does not hold back with I Love Boosters. Nearly every frame contains some combination of practical effects, outlandish wardrobes, detailed sets, vivid colors, stop motion, or creative miniatures – all my favorite things. On top of that, the truly funky score draws you in almost immediately. You rarely see this level of care nowadays.
Sadly, that care doesn’t extend to the script, which heavily slants towards “tell don’t show.” Clunky monologues delivering freshman-level social and class critique don’t exactly inspire. We get it, you want workers to unionize, to earn more, and to pay less. Those aren’t exactly groundbreaking demands, yet Riley clearly designed I Love Boosters to be “revolutionary” art. I sat at attention, ready to welcome Riley’s insights, yet this is one of his weaker sermons – the congregation is much more likely to glaze over than rise up with I Love Boosters as the catalyst. Regrettably, he set I Love Boosters to “surface level,” perhaps inspired by one of the far too many settings on his characters’ sci-fi gadget.
A film with this much style also lives and dies in the editing room, and I Love Boosters is begging for another pass. Jokes, reactions, and cuts are all at least a half second mistimed, significantly interrupting the snappy flow the film is very obviously going for.
The funniest bit, and this is a mild spoiler, is probably the pussy eating demon, but Riley seemingly does this out of obligation to uphold his outlandish reputation gained from Sorry to Bother You, rather than out of newfound inspiration. The skin suits introduced in the third act work much better at staying on message, but again, come across as frustratingly trite and surface level.
Ultimately, all of I Love Booster’s very pointed social commentary culminates in an incredibly weak “workers unite in protest” kumbaya moment, which honestly just undermines nearly the entire film. Despite the truly excellent craft found here, the ending is so limp, empty, and sincerely naïve that it re- (or honestly, further-) contextualizes all the previous proselytizing as the flirtations of an artist trapped in their own bubble, rather than the convictions of a revolutionary in the streets.
