Review: Sorry To Bother You

Image courtesy of Annapurna Pictures.

"Sorry to Bother You" gives Childish Gambino's "This is America" video a run for its money as the most prescient viewing experience of the moment. It is the social commentary we need right now. Even when the film goes a little off the rails in its final scenes, it's an impressive directorial debut for Boots Riley, a former member of the 1990s hip hop group The Coup, whose music deserves greater recognition.

This is a satire of many things and the type of film where a lot is thrown at the wall. The good news is that most of it sticks. As the film opens, Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) is a guy who's lucky to have a lovely artist girlfriend named Detroit (Tessa Thompson), but isn't so successful in the job market. At the beginning of the film, he makes a humorous pitch for a telemarketing job and manages to get hired, despite some exaggerations on his part.

Once on the job, he finds that telemarketing isn't as easy as it seems, that is, until an older man (Danny Glover) who sits next to him gives him a helpful hint: when calling potential customers, put on a white voice. This brings him much success, drawing the attention of his supervisors, who promise to send him upstairs to become a higher level telemarketer, although that job involves some seriously shady business.

In the workplace, Cassius and Detroit fall in with a group of disgruntled employees who want to unionize and, soon, a war between the workers and management breaks out, forcing Cassius to pick sides. At first, he picks the wrong one and is introduced to the big honcho (Armie Hammer), a guy whose side business involves a live-in company that exploits its workers and a plan to create half-human-half-horse beings to take the place of slow moving humans. Oh, and the most popular show on TV is "I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me."

Riley's often hilarious satire covers a lot of ground - race and identity politics, capitalism and corporate slavery, our modern age of stupidity and even performance art. Although the combination of all these elements doesn't always flow together smoothly - at least, at the film's end - it's a promising debut for Riley, who is able to make a message movie that doesn't feel like one because the audience is too busy laughing at how outrageously funny it is.

Also, Riley makes some pretty clever choices. For starters, the picture is a comedy, but also incorporates elements of science fiction and social commentary. One of his best decisions is that Cassius' "white voice" isn't Stanfield's impersonation of how a white person talks, but rather an actual voice over (ditto Danny Glover's character), which makes it all the more hilarious and absurd. "Sorry to Bother You" is the type of comedy that cranks it up to 11 and, for the most part, it's proof that Riley is a new talent to watch behind the camera.