Apparently, I like what writer/director Boots Riley is laying down. In his previous film, Sorry to Bother You, he found an inspired way to attack racism and gross capitalism through the lens of a Black telemarketer who discovers that the key to financial success is to put on a “white” voice. The film eventually dives into more science-fiction/conspiracy theory territory, but that’s where it begins. His latest work, I Love Boosters, is more ambitious, in both scale and subject matter. Still attacking capitalism, Riley sets his sites on the world of fashion culture and the sweatshop workers upon whose back many designers produce their products. He still gets surreal, but this time, his antagonists have bigger goals in mind, like revolution.
I Love Boosters centers on a Bay Area crew of three expert shoplifters (known as “boosters”)—group leader Corvette (Keke Palmer); best friend Sade (Naomi Ackie); and Mariah (Taylour Paige)—who are specifically targeting the stores belonging to billionaire designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore). The women hire a token white girl for each new job as a distraction, and then they run out with as much merch as they can fit into their waiting van. Eventually, the clothes get resold, but it never seems like enough money for Corvette to get out from under a crushing weight of problems she needs money to solve. The three squat in an abandoned apartment over a fried chicken restaurant, and while the place always smells good, there’s no chicken to be had. Corvette is also a designer, and one of the reasons she’s stealing from Smith is that she envies her success and perhaps even wants to get her attention as an artist.
Initially, we believe the film is going to be a running countdown clock until the girls get caught, but instead Riley has other plans. In the backgrounds of many scenes, we see news stations interviewing what appear to be average citizens (played by the likes of Jason Ritter, Jermaine Fowler, and Kara Young) fed up with the crime in their city. We also see commercials from a Dr. Jack (an unrecognizable Don Cheadle), with a pyramid scheme that promises to make people money. All of these pieces eventually come together as I Love Boosters moves through its story at a breakneck speed. Let’s not forget LaKeith Stanfield as the uber-sexy Pinky Ring Guy, with his heart set on Corvette, even though it turns out he’s a soul-sucking demon.
But the real shift in tone comes when we’re introduced to Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a Chinese factory worker making clothes for Christie in hazardous conditions and demanding change. When she and a co-worker discover a device that makes shoplifting a whole lot easier and faster, they catch the attention of the boosters, who make her a partner and agree to help her with her goal of unionizing the workforce, who demand safer working conditions and more money. It turns out this mysterious device does a lot more than teleport things from one location to another at lightning speed, and with it, the girls are, for the first time in their lives, the ones in control.
Riley’s screenplay has a tendency to shift and make alterations when it needs to, regardless of whether logic prevails or not. And occasionally his revolutionary speak feels more like bumper-sticker slogans or things you would read on signs at protests, rather than actual, thought-out ideas or philosophy. As the film races to its conclusion, it starts to feel more like an abstract idea about a richly color-coordinated, science-fiction-driven world than anything like the one we live in, which is both exciting and underdeveloped. Palmer and Ackie are exceptional as the sometimes warring friends who have different objectives when it comes to their sophisticated stealing. But by the time we get to theories about skin-suited villains, time accelerators, and deconstruction rays, I mostly gave up on the hope that I Love Boosters would offer any practical advice for budding young disruptors.
I haven’t even mentioned fun supporting players like Will Poulter, Eiza González, Eric André, and Adam DeVine, all of whom pop in, do something wild, and then vanish until the screenplay requires their presence. As he describes himself, Riley is a filmmaker who doesn’t know much about traditional filmmaking, and that’s the reason to pay attention to what he’s doing. He’s making movies with his friends and having fun in the process, and that elevated spirit actually translates to the screen and cascades into the audience, or at least it did for this audience member.
The film is now playing in theaters.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider supporting Third Coast Review’s arts and culture coverage by making a donation. Choose the amount that works best for you, and know it goes directly to support our writers and contributors.
