Review: I Love Boosters

Image courtesy of Neon.

Boots Riley's first film in eight years, "I Love Boosters," is a deliriously weird and often hilarious anti-capitalist, pro-worker comedy that has the same offbeat vibe as his debut, "Sorry to Bother You." This is a film that fully embraces its outrageousness and the result is mostly a very good time.

Trying to describe the film adequately is possibly a losing battle, but suffice it to say that it follows a group of boosters - people who steal clothing from stores and sell them at discount prices to those who cannot afford the original costs - who primarily target designer clothing stores owned by a fashion icon, Christie Smith (Demi Moore), who once stole a design from one of the gang's leaders, Corvette (Keke Palmer).

Things take a turn for the surreal when the gang meets a Chinese woman, Jianhu (Poppy Liu), who is taking revenge on Smith for the deplorable conditions that workers at her factory are facing by stealing a machine that was in Smith's possession that acts as a portal. Smith was planning on using the portal to ship goods without paying mailing costs, but Jianhu has put the portal to use to steal merchandise from Smith's stores, send the clothes back to China through the portal, and hold them ransom in exchange for better benefits for the workers.

Corvette and her friends Sadie (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylor Paige) join forces with Jianhu and her compatriots and go to war with Smith, who lives in a slanted office building where everything inevitably slides across the floor at all times.

The film is loaded with vibrant colors and offbeat touches - there's a giant ball of trash that Corvette often sees rolling down the street for reasons unknown, and the scenes of stealing the clothes with the portal are laugh-out-loud funny. 

There are several scenes in the picture that are among the funniest of the year - for example, the portal's ability to "deconstruct," which leads to an awkward sex scene, another in which a hilarious excuse is used to not come to the door, and the great opening sequence which we are led to believe is a nightclub pick-up, but ends up being something else.

Similar to "Everything Everywhere All at Once," not every nutty joke lands - LaKeith Stanfield is involved in a subplot in which he pursues Corvette, but turns her off due to his, ahem, supernatural powers, and there's a series of stop-motion animation sequences late in the picture involving people with no skin that don't add too much to the film.

But this is, overall, an often very funny and entertaining follow up to "Sorry to Bother You" that actually has something to say about consumerism, capitalism, and corporate theft of artist's visions. The cast is all clearly having a great time and they mostly excel in their roles - Don Cheadle's bizarre inspirational speaker and Will Poulter's fussy store manager are two other memorable characters. "I Love Boosters" may not end up with the title of the summer's best movie - but it might be the funniest and will certainly be among the most memorable and creative.