Rating 7/10
There is something comical about an anti-capitalist critique being sold as entertainment that demands you purchase a ticket within the very system it wants to indict. But that contradiction is also part of the surreality. Director Boots Riley has given us a work too gleefully ridiculous to be received as a solemn manifesto. It is a heist comedy with a Marxist megaphone, a fashion-world satire with a light touch, and, most importantly, a very funny movie. This champion of economic freedom found himself laughing out loud.
Boots Riley may have been born in Chicago, but his family’s move to Oakland when he was six clearly shaped his love for the Bay Area. I Love Boosters is the work of an artist still in conversation with the place that molded him. Our story follows Corvette (Keke Palmer), Mariah (Taylour Paige), and Sade (Naomi Ackie), a shoplifting crew known as the Velvet Gang. They steal from a high-end retail chain and resell the clothes at a discount to make ends meet.
Their target is Metro Designers, run by fashion mogul Christie Smith (Demi Moore). Christie is a self-important visionary who speaks in lofty terms about clothing as transformative art while dismissing the women stealing from her stores as low-class criminals. Except she uses language that would make Gordon Ramsay blush. No one seems to either care or admonish her for it. When aspiring designer Corvette discovers that Christie may have stolen one of her own designs, the gang’s hustle mutates into something more personal.
Then things get really weird. A factory worker in China named Jianhu (Poppy Liu) shows up using a stolen teleportation device. She beams Metro Designers’ merchandise back to China to gain leverage in demanding better pay and conditions for the factory workers. The device also has a “situational accelerator,” which heightens the conflicts inherent in whatever it is pointed at, and a “deconstruction” setting, which breaks an object down into the elements that made it. Are you still with me?
To Boots Riley, shoplifting, or “boosting,” is not morally reprehensible theft, but an act of resistance against a system that has already stolen from the workers, designers, and communities beneath it. That idea has been a recurring topic for Riley. Before it was a film, “I Love Boosters” was a 2006 song by his Oakland hip-hop group, The Coup. Framing theft as noble when directed at a corporation requires a moral leap that it never fully justifies on an intellectual level. The good news is, it does not have to. The account works as a creative blast of zany comic energy.
Early on, Riley establishes the absurd logic of this world through humor centered around the workplace. Mariah describes her crew’s anti-capitalist shoplifting operation as “Triple F: Fashion Forward Filanthropy.” Then, after a beat, she deadpans that she knows how to spell philanthropy, but “branding though!”
Christie operates her business out of a skyscraper tilted at 30 degrees in the San Francisco Bay Area. Corvette sneaks into Christie’s office inside an espresso cart, and the difficulty with which the barista (Sarah Elaine) must navigate the cart on a tilted floor is a sight gag out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. Corvette tries to sneak out of the cart but can’t make it past the slanted floor as she runs in place. Christie spots her and demands to know her name. Corvette has to come up with a fake identity on the spot. Calling herself a variation of the French Congac Courvoisier and claiming to be the CEO of the espresso company is deeply hilarious in a way that you have to see to understand.
The funniest expression of the oppressive workplace may be the “lunch break” scene, where their boss, Grayson (Will Poulter), fires a starter pistol. The employees launch from starting blocks, sprinting out of the store as if grabbing a sandwich were a qualifying heat. It is one of many moments where the screenplay turns the human cost of corporate efficiency into a comic target.
The account is overflowing with supporting characters, either vying to start a revolution or to pull off a scam. Violeta (Eiza González ) is a coworker trying to push the crew toward actual labor organizing. A dude known only as Pinky Ring Guy (LaKeith Stanfield) is revealed to be a mysterious figure whose role grows stranger as things progress. A self-help speaker, Dr. Jack (Don Cheadle), encourages people to join a pyramid scheme called “Friends Being Friendly”. These are just a few of the oddballs in a production bursting with strange detours.
Nevertheless, I Love Boosters is consistently a laugh riot. People trying to justify bad behavior in grand ideological terms is a great basis for a lot of random jokes. It is impressive how many of these absurdities connect. They exaggerate something recognizable to the point it becomes silly. When Corvette and Sade leave a store with their confiscated merchandise, Corvette waddles through the parking lot, looking like a giant pink Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Another running bit has the girls employing a white woman (Rachel Walters) as a distraction in the shop so they can steal. But when she is not available, Mariah shows she has a talent for holding her breath so she can appear light-skinned (Robin Thede). The comedy lies in that space between political theory and complete absurdity. The loopy, off-kilter score by Tune-Yards (Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner) is another standout. “Hi Ho” is a mischievous march that underscores the lunacy.
The account is a creative amalgamation that skewers Capitalism. The way luxury brands repackage exploitation as art is handled with a whimsical approach. But the movie is far more effective as pure comedy. Near the end, it starts to fall apart under the weight of its own strangeness. A fashion show exposes people wearing $100,000 human suits. It is hard to explain, but there is claymation involved. Not always clear what point Riley is making in every tangent, but it is almost always funny. I Love Boosters sells the joke.
05-26-26