I Love Boosters Review: A Delirious, Overwhelming, And Hilarious Satire

Do you feel exploited, especially for the efforts of your labor? Are you upset, perhaps even personally insulted, by the way the creative elite of the world treat people like mere subjects? Have you ever wished you could change the fabric of reality? If you said "yes" to any or all of these, then Boots Riley's new film, "I Love Boosters," is for you. For those who've been following the burgeoning filmmaking career of Riley, the movie won't be a complete surprise. It's a surrealist, socially conscious satire in a similar fashion to Riley's first two projects, the feature film "Sorry to Bother You" and the limited TV series "I'm a Virgo." Yet there's a particular energy to "I Love Boosters" that feels like Riley has become more comfortable behind the camera.

Riley's public persona lives in conjunction with his work, and all of it generally is aimed at activism in some form. As such, most of his work, whether his film and TV show or his music with the group The Coup, tends to keep his activism at the forefront. (Two of The Coup's albums are entitled "Kill My Landlord" and "Steal This Album," for instance.) "I Love Boosters" certainly wears its politics and social commentary on its sleeve, yet these are only elements in the massive brush that Riley is painting with. "I Love Boosters" isn't some thinly veiled manifesto, but a heady, delirious, hilarious genre-bending comedy in its own right. Despite some unevenness in its structure, the movie feels like Riley has found a way to be crowd-pleasing as a filmmaker while not losing his distinctive voice.

"I Love Boosters" has a relatively simple premise at its core. Corvette (Keke Palmer) is a frustrated clothing designer whose financial situation has her squatting in an abandoned fast food chicken joint. She's the leader of a group of clothing boosters called the Velvet Gang, which include her friends Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige). They don't steal clothes from just any high-end stores or brand, either. Corvette targets the work of megastar designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore), partially because she's a big fan, and partially because Smith may or may not be directly responsible for thwarting her dreams. 

As the Velvet Gang enact larger and more elaborate schemes to steal and resell Smith clothing, they come across a series of other obstacles and conspiracies that cannot go ignored. Colorful characters like a disgruntled boutique worker (Eiza González), a Chinese sweatshop employee (Poppy Liu), a pyramid scheme huckster (an unrecognizable Don Cheadle), and a mysteriously seductive male model (LaKeith Stanfield) get caught up in the drama.

"Colorful" is the operative word there, because Riley and his crew, including cinematographer Natasha Braier, production designer Christopher Glass and costume designer Shirley Kurata, have made the film one of the most visually innovative comedies in a minute. "Boosters" recalls heady, go-for-broke early '90s cult movies like "Freaked" as much as it references music videos, fashion, and street culture. The visual feast goes beyond just costumes and color palettes, too: the movie includes such unlikely elements as extensive stop-motion animation and a monstrous creature designed by FX veteran Alec Gillis. It's so idiosyncratic, in fact, that it feels like Riley is establishing himself as a visual stylist along the lines of Michel Gondry or Wes Anderson.

There's a ton of imagination on display in "I Love Boosters," and while most of it is exhilarating, the sheer amount can start to feel exhausting. At first, the movie feels like Boots Riley working in a mode akin to early Terry Gilliam, letting the visual aspect of the movie fly off in all sorts of wacky directions but keeping a tight leash on the plot, characters, and structure. That all blows up once Poppy Liu's Jianhu enters the picture, sending the film into quantum theory overdrive. If "Sorry to Bother You" felt like James Baldwin by way of Kurt Vonnegut, "Boosters" feels like Karl Marx by way of Philip K. Dick. Even that comparison feels like an oversimplification, given how nuts the movie goes. Those who found the maximalism of "Everything Everywhere All At Once" neutered by that movie's sentimentalism will probably dig the way "I Love Boosters" manages to keep its surreal wits about itself without resorting to platitudes.

However, while "I Love Boosters" never succumbs to drowning in its own impenetrable lore á la "Southland Tales," the speed at which it introduces ideas that might break any other movie can be overwhelming. The sheer amount of concepts raised by the film also begins to throw it out of balance, bringing it to a level where almost no climax could feel wholly satisfying. Although "Boosters" wraps up in a way that feels emotionally and thematically sound, it still feels a little incomplete, likely because the various issues that Riley is confronting are hardly easily solved in real life. The film is far from anticlimactic, but it's also far from tight and tidy, too.

While "I Love Boosters" might not be enough to quell Boots Riley's harshest critics, and it might be too much for casual audiences, it's a testament to Riley's growing skills that the film never gets away from him. If "Sorry to Bother You" and "I'm a Virgo" saw the artist eagerly trying to tackle everything he could think of, "Boosters" feels like Riley matured that impulse into flexing his cinematic muscles. This is a movie whose climactic action sequence was made using a variety of charming miniatures. There's an especially cheeky post-credits scene which feels like Riley poking fun at anyone who might think the film was lacking. Hell, one key location, which could've been a standard office building, is turned by Riley into a setpiece worthy of Buster Keaton.

What "I Love Boosters" demonstrates most is that Riley has incredible range as a filmmaker, which could take him even further than he already is. The movie may not be as confrontational as other activists might want it to be, but Riley appears to have the canny knack for dressing thorny topics in an eye-catching and amusing package. In other words, he's become more adept at the Trojan horse aspect of cinema; you could watch "I Love Boosters" and have a grand old time without thinking too hard about it, or you could come away with a rough draft of your own manifesto. The film, like fashion, like life itself, could be seen as just something pretty. Yet to those who take Riley's invite to go beyond the surface, it can reveal much more. To quote Shakira: underneath your clothes, there's an endless story.

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10

"I Love Boosters" opens in theaters on May 22, 2026.