I Love Boosters

The Velvet Gang (Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie and Taylour Paige) set up their next big score in I Love Boosters (Distributed by Neon)

In 2018, writer/director Boots Riley made his feature debut with Sorry to Bother You. That was a wild, hilarious, unpredictable satire about a black man who found incredible success when he channeled his “white voice” while working as a telemarketer. It only got crazier and more surreal from there. Eight years later, Riley returns with his follow-up, the fashion industry satire I Love Boosters. It is neither as wild nor as bold, yet it is still very funny and original, even if it does not hit as hard or precisely.

Riley has now proven definitively that he will take chances. It is his vision on screen at all times and that vision is bizarre, smart and creative. This takes aim at class, culture and race in a lively, unsubtle, pull-no-punches kind of way. It also does many other things, some of them very strange. It is extremely entertaining. Even though it has similar targets as Sorry to Bother You, it attacks them in a different way. Boots Riley is a one-of-a-kind filmmaker. Anything he does is worth a look, if only to see what reality he will come up with next.

Corvette, Mariah and Sade are boosters: they steal designer clothes and sell them at a fraction of the cost. This makes them a target of fashion designer/icon Christie Smith. When the ladies get a job at a store that sells her stuff in order to scope it out for a big score, things get super weird and they wind up in the middle of something much larger than themselves.

I Love Boosters (103 minutes, plus a post-credit scene) exists in a world close to ours, but taken to extremes. The colors are vibrant to the point of (intentional) distraction, the fashion industry makes no attempt to hide their disdain for those who can’t afford their product, the action is cartoonish, the set design is over-the-top (see the apartment building built at an angle, so all the apartments are slanted). Those aren’t even the craziest aspects of this.

Demi Moore as Christie Smith

The plot is sneaky in how it seems to be a straightforward story of Corvette trying to make money, give back to her community and maybe disrupt the status quo along the way. It ends up going in a different direction, though Riley never forgets his themes. The concept of community ends up encompassing far more than just the neighborhood. It also takes some big shots at capitalism. His projects are political, but they are so damn entertaining that it is easy to go along for the ride. While his concepts could be weighty, he introduces so many fantastical elements to go with them that it makes them fun, even as those elements help the satire make real life look more ridiculous.

In the case of I Love Boosters, Riley is assisted mightily by a great cast. Keke Palmer is wonderful as Corvette, game to handle the wackiness and the serious undertones. Then there is Taylour Paige, Naomi Ackie and Poppy Liu as her accomplices, Demi Moore as the narcissistic fashion mogul, LaKeith Stanfield as an alluring man with eyes for Corvette, Will Poulter and Eiza González as employees at a high-end clothing store and many cameos. Everyone is given something to do and has at least one funny line. Somehow, they all understood the assignment and had no problem going for it with gusto.

It is great to see a filmmaker get the support to do whatever they want and get it on screen. Despite I Love Boosters feeling a little sloppy at times, its unpredictability and refusal to play by traditional rules of genre or tone make it exciting to watch. It is clever, thought-provoking and really funny, cementing anything Boots Riley does as must-see.

4 out of 5

Cast:

Keke Palmer as Corvette

Taylour Paige as Mariah

Naomi Ackie as Sade

Poppy Liu as Jianhu

Demi Moore as Christie Smith

Eiza González as Violeta

LaKeith Stanfield as Pinky Ring Guy

Will Poulter as Grayson

Written/Directed by Boots Riley