I Love Boosters, 2026.
Written and Directed by Boots Riley.
Starring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, Demi Moore, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, Najah Bradley, Kara Young, Jason Ritter, Eric André, Kate Berlant, Adam Devine, Briana Starks, Alan Z, Nadia Dawn, Kasmere Trice Stanfield, Kerris Dorsey, Rachel Walters, and Rawan Tamimi.
SYNOPSIS:
A fearless crew of inventive young women turns shoplifting into a radical act of defiance. When their exploits draw unwanted viral attention and their feud with fashion mogul Christie Smith turns personal, the Boosters plan one final, audacious heist. Joined by unexpected allies wielding supernatural powers and time-bending technology, they discover a chance to ignite revolutionary change.
Perhaps the only place to begin talking about writer/director Boots Riley’s sophomore feature, I Love Boosters, is where the filmmaker seems to live and die by: blunt force metaphors that work through sheer absurdism and eye-popping visual flair. Anyone who has seen his debut effort, Sorry to Bother You, already understands the difficulty in describing, let alone talking about his work. Suffice it to say, this is another busy, bonkers pastiche of ideas, blending everything from the cartoonish to the supernatural, live-action and stop-motion, taking aim at capitalism through the fashion industry. It technically contains characters, even though they are repeatedly sacrificed in favor of excessive style, striving for excessive substance. That’s also another way of saying that, even if everything in the film doesn’t fully come together, Boots Riley has cemented himself as one of the most imaginative filmmakers working today.
Put it this way: at one point, The Velvet Gang (a group of titular boosters who steal and resell expensive clothing at more affordable prices for those lower on the financial rung) comes into possession of a sci-fi gadget capable of teleportation, among other metaphysical features. Without explaining it (not that I even could), Boots Riley must have at least two or three scenes here that solely exist to try to explain those other functions. In the moment, it feels as if another language is going in one ear and out the other, and that this is all futile. However, in execution, what is transpiring on screen clicks visually in a way that better explains what the gadget is doing than any character’s speech ever could. That’s the level of madness being operated on here.
Regarding The Velvet Gang, they are sort of led by Keke Palmer’s Corvette, lonely and withdrawn from society, eager to create art through fashion, and gradually stepping into a rivalry with wealthy, ruthless fashion titan Christie Smith (Demi Moore letting loose with a nasty side), who has apparently stolen one of her designs. All characterization might as well end there, as this becomes a surreal battle against capitalism that defies all expectations. Even the potential love interest here (LaKeith Stanfield) has something secretive going on, and, quite frankly, there’s no explanation that does it justice. Boots Riley is also pulling from his past film; this time, instead of a Black person putting on a stereotypical calm white voice to make a sale at a call center, Taylour Paige’s Mariah holds her breath until she might as well be turning blue in the face as a means to lighten her skin color into a passing complexion, deflecting from racist suspicion while stealing outfits.
As the women began working at one of Christie’s many stores to case the location, which is managed by a ridiculous-looking Will Poulter who styles his hair to match the color of whatever palette is on the walls that day (allowing prime opportunities for some striking clean cinematography from Natasha Braler, in turn causing those colors to pop and give each scene a different flavor of vibrancy) and gives them one-second lunch breaks that play out by putting the characters on a fast-forward time lapse, it quickly becomes clear that they are not the only one with an ax to grind against the greedy corporation.
Poppy Liu’s Jianpu arrives first, intent on ruining the business in retaliation for ignoring the sandblasting at the China-based factory, which is proving to be life-threatening to everyone working there, including her family. Her character is also the closest I Love Boosters comes to having anything resembling an emotional arc that’s simple and relatable enough to invest in. Sure, around the halfway mark, Corvette and Naomi Ackie’s Sade find a wedge driven between them about whether they should choose the route of all-out revenge or sell the stolen goods from Christie, but the film is so embedded in relentless genre-bending chaos by that point that it never registers as fleshed out or meaningful. Co-worker Violeta (Eiza Gonzalez) is also roped into this insanity, surprisingly equipped with a staggering amount of scientific knowledge relating to the aforementioned gadgets.
It’s also worth mentioning that part of that clothing includes a new line in which each outfit costs a preposterous amount of money, even by this industry’s standards. The answer to what that is, of course, something unhinged from the mind of Boots Riley I would never dare spoil, but will say it makes for one fittingly outrageous metaphor that transforms aspects of the film into another medium entirely (the right choice was made in stop-motion, as I can’t imagine any world this would work using modern CGI or other animation tools).
There is a moment early on when Corvette’s financial fears manifest visually as a metaphorical giant ball of notices and dues, continuously growing in size as it attaches more and more from rolling, like something out of the video game Katamari Damacy. That’s also the perfect summation of Boots Riley’s process for gathering ideas; I Love Boosters keeps picking them up, barreling full-steam ahead, sometimes not knowing what to do with all of them, but enough to overwhelm the senses and fry the brain with frenzied purpose and a cranked-to-11 distinct visual voice.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
