In the long-awaited follow-up to his 2018 surreal satire Sorry To Bother You, Boots Riley turns his iconoclastic gaze upon the inequities of globalised late capitalism through the kaleidoscopic point of view of a group of shoplifters who find bizarre new ways to fight the power of an evil fashion designer.
For all this critique of the damage done by our obsession with the almighty dollar, the four illustrious leads (Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige and Poppy Liu) aren’t shy about demanding what their wares are worth. The system may be broken, but as long as it’s all we’ve got, they need to make a living, even if it’s somewhere between Ocean’s Eleven and Robin Hood and his Merrie Men.
The costume and make-up departments have worked overtime to ensure that the entire cast looks like a giant fruit salad, while sets and locations are stuffed with idiosyncratic detail, inviting us to get to know our fearless foursome as they make their way around a world that may be imaginary, but nonetheless feels like it’s on the same dilapidated street as ours.
Garish primary colours (reds, greens, pinks, oranges) dominate the lighting scheme, not so much diluting the film’s political message as painting it in giant letters and flashing it at you until your epilepsy kicks in. If subtlety is out of fashion, then Boots Riley must be achingly hip.
Still, for all his outré design ideas and scattershot plotting, he directs his literate and inventive script with a real sense of control, and all the performances (particularly the four leads) are on an even enough keel to make the jokes land, instead of trying so hard they fall flat on their faces. Riley’s is a unique voice, managing to be loud and clear without being obnoxious.
While there’s an authenticity about the slang-clad dialogue and lived-in relationships, you can hardly accuse the film of anything so tedious as ‘realism’. After all, our heroines have a habit of hallucinating some of their director’s wilder metaphors: a giant snowball of household bills; a journey down one’s own gullet; a Prince-soundtracked sex scene that transmutes from She’s Gotta Have It to The Thing.
The targets of his satire are set up as on a firing range, and Riley doesn’t mind getting his elbows dirty as he crawls from rifle to rifle – here a dig at the ice-cold cruelty of high fashion, there a pop at the manipulative and histrionic self-centredness of a certain strain of Generation Z. His editing frequently eschews orthodox transitions, preferring to fold spacetime rather than simply travel through it.
The equally busy music score by tUnE-yArDs is a melange of styles modern and otherwise, veering from aggressive EDM to John Williams melodiousness to a boisterous oompah refrain. It’s like listening to a battle of the bands at the world’s most ironic hipster disco.
Riley decorates his supporting cast with magnificent caricatures, including blonde-wigged Demi Moore sucking in her cheeks with entitled rage as the hissable and institutionally racist villain, and a barely recognisable Don Cheadle as the kind of saggy, dreadlocked, high-pitched motivational speaker Eddie Murphy might once have improvised for a giggle.
I Love Boosters is a crazy quilt visually and thematically, and Boots Riley has clearly saved up a couple of dozen idea boards for a bunch of new movies, but given the commercial level at which he’s operating, it’s understandable that he’d scatter them all into this one while he’s got the funding. His latest film is all over the shop floor, but it’s endlessly creative and never boring.
-Stew Mott-
