Sorry to Bother You is the unholy amalgam of Office Space and Idiocracy, but clearly on some sort of drug trip. First time director Boots Riley teams up with the hottest actor in town, Lakeith Stanfield to tell a scathing satirical story that skewers more than a few subjects over a flaming pit of hot sauce…
Cassius (Stanfield) is your run of the mill working class man, trying to find something he’s good at, like his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson) who’s gift is politically charged art. Desperate for a job, Cassius starts working at a telemarketing agency called RegalView. He finds his calling when an older co-worker, Langston (Danny Glover), tells him to use his “white voice,” (voice of David Cross) which puts his customers more at ease. Cassius, after this tip, becomes the star of the company, and becomes a power broker, which leads him into the path of Mr. ______ (Omari Hardwick, and yes that’s his character name) and the CEO of a super duper corporation, Steve Lift (Armie Hammer).
Remember, this is Boots Riley’s first feature film. The way he directs Sorry to Bother You, it’s as if he thinks this will be his last film. Ergo, he throws probably most of his hot takes into the movie. The white voice concept is an amazing one that won’t be forgotten soon. The movie describes the voice as knowing the comfort being white brings to people, just destroying corporate racist tendencies in advertising. So it has a point, great, but everytime the tool is deployed, it’s also just effing hilarious, especially when Cassius aka David Cross says “Let’s pour one out for the homies.” Funny and potent makes for a perfect satirical concoction. In general, though, the bigger throughline of the movie is corporate malfeasance and pervasiveness in the lives of the everyday person. Like Idiocracy, there’s a string of just hilariously moronic TV shows about people getting the crap kicked out of them, as well as some truly scathing corporate advertisments from Steve Lift’s company that insists they are not conducting slave labor and everyone’s happy living and working at their job because they have bunk beds! YAY!!! As the story goes on, we see the truly bonkers lengths the WorryFree corporation is willing to go to increase efficiency and profit at the expense of the working man, and Cassius is the innocent bystander that has to decipher what he can do in this situation.
And therein is the emotional impact of Sorry to Bother You. Cassius’s ascent in RegalView provides him with a myriad of tough choices, especially circulating around Detroit. What is the right balance of making money and staying grounded and real? Will he find that balance, or risk losing her to a more woke proletariat (Steven Yeun)? Also, is Cassius being used because of how cool he is to the higher ups, and is he truly giving up his soul by helping further WorryFree’s attempts at population control? And most cleverly, once Cassius has some power in RegalView, how much and when will he choose to act? Is simply quietly leaving and protesting enough? These questions all linger under the surface of truly outlandish earring game from Thompson, imaginary drop ins when Cassius is calling customers, and a ridiculous art show involving whipping batteries at the star of the show. Sorry to Bother You wants you engage you mind about a lot of things, sometimes too many, but greater is always better than fewer.
I truly hope Sorry To Bother You isn’t all Boots Riley wants to say. This movie’s style is fascinating and frenetic, with some truly jarring third act revelations and stellar performances to keep you riveted at what you’re watching. Sorry To Bother You is one of those rare fun films where there is simply no way to draw a line from the beginning to end, and that line would end up straight. That line would probably look like the wild locks Tessa Thompson is rocking.