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Surrealism is not my favorite film genre, but I will make a massive exception if it's in the hands of Boots Riley. Not unlike his debut, Riley's latest feature, "I Love Boosters," (now on VOD) is a weird, vibrant, funny, thoughtful, hopeful thesis on collective action and workers' rights. At a time when satire is almost impossible, Riley manages to create something just bonkers enough that actually feels like it has something to say, and is bright and colorful enough to demand your attention.
Corvette (Keke Palmer) is struggling to get where she wants to be in life, so poor that she's squatting in a closed chicken restaurant. She and her friends, Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), steal clothes from the high-end boutique Metro and resell them at a lower price to people in their community. As part of their desire to get better at boosting, the three take jobs at Metro, hoping to figure out how to clear out an entire store.
But one day, while they are being reprimanded by Grayson for wearing last year's Metro line from designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore), they leave the meeting to discover that someone has beaten them to emptying the store. They track down Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a Chinese woman who has a teleporting device that allows her to send the clothes back to China, where they are manufactured, hoping to force Christie to give them better wages and safer working conditions. They realize that they need to work together if they are going to see the changes they are striving for.
At a time when so many trailers give away the entire movie, "I Love Boosters" is so wholly unique that if someone explained every plot point to you, you would still need to see it to fully grasp everything happening on screen. Like Corvette's full-to-bursting pink tracksuit, this movie is stuffed with ideas and colors and characters, but it somehow all manages to stay together, creating an absolute feast for your eyes and ears.
The performances in this are spectacular from top to bottom. Palmer sparkles, even as we see her running away from a literal ball of her problems. Moore gets to play the opposite side of her role in "The Substance," this time as the person trying to amass more wealth at the expense of those beneath her, primarily other women, and she tears it up. Don Cheadle is almost unrecognizable as Dr. Jack, a man Sade idolizes for his Friends Being Friendly pyramid scheme. Will Poulter is absolutely hilarious as Grayson, a Metro manager who has fully embraced everything Christie Smith is selling.
There are some issues with this film that don't quite come together. The whole LaKeith Stanfield arc is very funny, but doesn't quite fit with the rest of the movie. Paige is fantastic in her role, but there is more depth between Sade and Corvette, leaving less for Paige's Mariah to do. But the messiness is so minor compared to the rest of "I Love Boosters" that it tends to get swept away in the maximalist filmscape that Riley has created.
Throughout the movie, Christie Smith has a lot to say about creating art and how her clothes allow people to become art themselves. At one point, someone tells her that people don't want to be art, they want to make art. And that feels very much at the heart of this film. Most people want to create something beautiful that helps their community, but are constantly chased by the pressure to simply survive. To put a roof over your head, food on the table, clothes on your back. "I Love Boosters" says this dream is possible, but we might have to significantly change how we look at things and recognize that we're stronger together than apart.
Rating: 4.5/5
Alise Chaffins is a freelance and Tomatometer-approved film critic.