The second feature film by Hip-Hop's most colorful Marxist, writer/director Boots Riley, I Love Boosters, doubles up on the surreal aspects in Sorry to Bother You (2018) and doubles down on its messages of worker outrage and collective revolt.
For this outing, Riley -- who is also the frontman and creative force for The Coup and co-founder of rock/rap hybrid Street Sweeper Social Club with fellow corporate critic Tom Morello -- has fashioned a trippy tale of resistance set in his beloved Oakland that skewers many of capitalism's sacred cows.
KeKe Palmer (Good Fortune, One of Them Days, The 'Burbs) is the leader of a trio of haute-couture thieves who swipe clothing from stores, the "boosting" of the title, for reselling at considerably reduced prices.
The scheme -- which hasn't paid off in the way Palmer's "Corvette" dreamt it would -- gets complicated when Corvette targets a local high-end designer, Christie Smith (a especially brassy Demi Moore), whose work aspirant designer Corvette admires.
When Corvette and partners Sade (Naomie Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige) decide to stage a hit from inside one of Smith's Metro Design stores, their plan is thwarted by another booster, a young Chinese woman with a futuristic device whose programming is a hilarious goolash of physics and political philosophy. The film is ingenious in its convolution and one either goes with it or not.
With cameos from Don Cheadle and Boots Riley regular LaKeith Stanfield, truly outlandish costuming, radical polemics, whiffs of new age hucksterism and demon possession, and an unbelievable vehicle chase through an urban mall, "I Love Boosters" is an irresistible old-school "freak-out" for those hip enough to hop on.
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