Hey, if you’re gonna be angry, better have a little fun with it right. Boots Riley is back, bringing that wonderful specific storytelling only he possesses to the big screen. I Love Boosters is wonderfully him, making me a little sad he isn’t more prolific in his filmmaking. That’s gotta be due to a few things, like Boots’s great musical career…and more likely being stymied by capitalism. Yes, all of it.
A booster is someone who steals clothes from a store, and bootlegs them on the street for cheaper so normal people can afford them. The big group of the moment is the Velvet gang: Corvette (Keke Palmer), Sade (Naomi Ackie), and Mariah (Taylour Paige), terrorizing the Bay Area, targeting Metro Design run by genius turned fashion designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore). The war slowly escalates, encapsulating Jianhu (Poppy Liu) who worked in a Metro Design factory in China, Grayson (Will Poulter) and Violeta (Eiza Gonzalez), who work at a Metro Design store, and naturally, a Pinky Ring Guy (Lakeith Stanfield), who transfixes Corvette everytime he opens his mouth.
Capitalism goes after Boots Riley because Boots Riley’s movies go after the whole capitalist system. Boots is angry, but he’s also hella funny, meaning we’re in for absurdist satire. At its best, there’s nothing better. I Love Boosters’s targets are so broad and vast (like Sorry to Bother You), the movie goes after everyone keeping the system going. My favorites were the television asides, featuring this rotating group of token people complaining about poor people and thieves while at the same time propping up the “good” moneymakers in power with cyring black mother’s (Kara Young, and yes, that’s the character’s name) phrases like “I can’t believe they’re taking the owner’s freedom to upcharge my rent”. Each new one with a hella horrific broad stereotype just gets funnier and funnier. The fashion industry’s takedown is like shooting fish in a barrel: Will Poulter’s middle manager is the perfect encapsulation of fragile “ally” male ego, using all the therapy buzz words against Violeta and his other employees; Demi Moore has a blast with Christie Smith, knowing what she’s doing is awful but completely self-victiming herself into justifications inside her slanted highrise building rebranded as a brave new design. There’s even subtle digs at the bottom of the chain, as the Velvet Gang, Violeta, and Jianhu are constantly infighting, refusing to work together because of their own selfish goals and take mine mentality they learned from capitalism instead of realizing that Violeta has an incredible scientific mind that can be used to everyone’s advantages, or Dr. Jack’s (Don Cheadle) connection scheme is just an MLM sucking money out of gullible saps.
And when all else fails, time for a left turn. That’s Boots’s other power as a storyteller. You probably could rightly expect that a group of people stealing clothes might end up in a car chase right? Well that does happen. However, I took a brief pause, and considered the participants in the car chase, and I still can’t believe how Boots got us there, and it somehow makes some sense in his insane world. The big macguffin he introduces happens about 30 minutes in. That introduction blows out the scope of his story to fit the tale he wants to tell about how all suppressing capitalism is. In addition, that means there’s opportunities to take more than one bold swing and see where they go. And while we’re all staring at the macguffin in awe, we forget about the other stuff Boots seemingly randomly threw in at the beginning, rearing its head later to everyone’s “holy sh*t” surprise in my theater. The Lakeith Stanfield subplot doesn’t quite work, but even his arc is also wondrously weird and hidden as to where that is going. Originality like that is rare to find in a movie, and that level of excitement propels I Love Boosters forward, careening it’s car into crashing the capitalist society, burning it into the ground for something better.
So Boots Riley, I don’t know how much I Love Boosters, but I love your style! I hope you’ll make more than one film every 8 years in the future? Just stay away from Upstanding Community Member, Crying Black Mother, and Based Young Dude or whomever capitalists try to put in your way. I’ll be on the lookout for them too.