Nearly 8 years ago, I penned
one of the most scathing reviews I've ever written about Boots Riley's debut feature
Sorry to Bother You. Riley has returned to the world of movies after trying his hand at television with 2023's
I'm a Virgo with another absurdist social sci-fi satire in
I Love Boosters. Has all of this time away from Riley's creative output caused me to warm up to his brand of hyperactive maximalism? Nope, but the vitriol that I have for
Sorry to Bother You (mostly) didn't carry over to
I Love Boosters.
The working-class subculture Riley uses as the jumping off point for his wacky shenanigans this time around is "boosting", which is the practice of shoplifting clothes and selling them on the street at a discounted price. The boosters we follow here are a trio of Oakland women known as "The Velvet Gang" (Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige) who go around the Bay Area in elaborate disguises stealing from luxury stores. They view it as a service for their community and have become kind of folk heroes to people who otherwise would never be able to afford to buy designer brand merchandise. Things get trickier for The Velvet Gang when they draw the ire of luxury fashion titan Christie Smith (Demi Moore) and she ups the security at all of her stores, which causes The Velvet Gang to get jobs at one of her stores to make ends meet while they plot how to steal merchandise from the inside without getting caught. The Velvet Gang's plan to lay low for a bit gets blown up pretty quickly when they discover that Smith stole a dress design that Corvette (Palmer) submitted to a contest a year earlier. As payback for Smith's artistic theft, The Velvet Gang draw up a plan to clear out the inventory of every single store Smith owns in the Bay Area. Their simple revenge plan becomes a lot more complicated when they cross paths with a Chinese factory worker (Poppy Liu) who has her own bone to pick with Smith and a co-worker (Eiza Gonzalez) who wants to unionize their store to fight back against the policies that have severely restricted their break time, vacation time and paychecks.
At a time where income inequality and corporate exploitation of workers are even more prevalent than they were when Sorry to Bother You was released in July 2018, shitting on a movie that tackles these issues head-on feels kind of wrong. However, Riley having good politics doesn't make him a good filmmaker. His approach to sociopolitical commentary remains referencing a couple of dozen issues over the course of a movie then failing to meaningfully explore any of them. It's like he's gearing up to teach a class on the intersection of class, race, worker's rights and the fashion industry, but can't get past the introductory blub that he wrote for each section on the syllabus. There are some coherent points about the importance of collectivism, discovering that so many struggles around the world are interconnected and the fashion industry's common practice of stealing ideas from smaller designers (especially black and brown ones) then trying to pass them off as their own, but they ultimately get snuffed out by the plethora of other less developed ideas Riley bats around here that are all fighting each other for oxygen. Being conscience of and empathetic towards the struggles working class people are facing at the hands of corporations shows that Riley has genuine class consciousness. However, his solidarity doesn't excuse how his lack of focus in addressing these topics eliminates any chance he has of saying anything about the plight of the working people of the world that boasts much substance.
Once again, Riley's Jackson Pollock approach to social/political commentary isn't in the pole position of my gripes with his filmmaking style. That title would go to his use of comedy. Absurdist satire is what he felt was the best vessel for the stories he's trying to tell. It's a choice that makes sense given all of the loopy turns his narrative takes and eccentric people that populate his stories. In practice, it becomes a brutal miscalculation as Riley just has zero feel for comedy. His approach to absurdist humor is weirdly noncommittal as he refuses to lean into the zaniness of the situations that he puts his characters in or counteract it with deadpan deliveries. What makes the jokes consistently falling flat particularly head-scratching is that Riley has a cast full of actors (Palmer, Ackie, Paige, Liu, Gonzalez, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, several people who make surprise cameos here) who have experience thriving with comedy at his disposal and yet, his punchlines are still getting met with far more crickets than guffaws. Comedic instincts are something that are something that can't be taught and Riley has proven that he simply doesn't have them.
Where I Love Boosters does separate itself from Sorry to Bother You is in the art departments. Neon gave Riley a $20 mil budget- which is over 6 times higher than what he made Sorry to Bother You for- to make this and that significantly larger pool of money to play with can be seen on screen. Riley set out to make something with a vibrant aesthetic, and it shows in the explosively colorful production design, costumes and cinematography that allow every frame of the film to really pop visually. He even went as far as to find ways to work stop motion and miniatures into the big final act setpieces. Riley's visual sensibilities and creativity are leaps ahead of the rest of his filmmaking bag (which isn't surprising given his previous experience with music video direction) and I honestly think that his best path forward as a filmmaker is to make something that is driven by these qualities instead of a narrative.
Despite my feelings towards I Love Boosters and Riley's work, I hope that he'll be able to keep putting stuff out in the future. While the grim financial realities of indie filmmaking in the 2020's aren't lost on me, this sector will start to march towards extinction if the industry refuses to back singular cinematic voices with passionate fanbases once they make one movie that doesn't do well at the box office relative to its budget. Most movies are a big roll of the financial dice and the fact that many people in the business seem to have lost sight of that is pretty fucking alarming. Time will tell if Riley can become the next Ari Aster and come out of multiple financial misfires in a row professionally unscathed, but I sure as shit wouldn't bet on that happening.
