The classic @Tormny_Pickeals’ tweet declared, “Black Panther was a fine movie but its politics were a bit iffy. wouldve been way better if at the end the Black Panther turned to the camera & said “i am communist now” & then specified hes the exact kind of communist i am.”(sic) If Black Panther had gone that route, it likely would’ve felt like the films of Boots Riley. I’m not sure Riley and I are exactly the same flavor of left. I am guessing we agree on probably 95% of the issues, though. He makes wild, inventive films full of incredible imagery and colors that wear their hearts on their sleeves. I certainly commend that. And yet, his newest, I Love Boosters, leaves me a bit cold.

This is sadly not new, as I also ended up a bit out of step with the masses on his previous work, Sorry To Bother You. However, the route there was different. Sorry had me in the palm of its hand until the Equisapien conclusion, a literalization of the film’s themes that struck me as less anarchic, more “just making sure you got this” in execution. I Love Boosters, on the other hand, never lost me. It just never had me as enthralled as Sorry did.

In the Bay Area, the Velvet Gang is a triumvirate of friends—the titular Boosters—who especially target designer Christie Smith’s (Demi Moore, relishing every line) Metro Designer clothing stores. Corvette (a note-perfect Keke Palmer), an aspiring designer herself, is the team’s leader. She lives in an abandoned fast-food chicken restaurant. She’s regularly bedeviled by a massive boulder of paperwork and objects, a literalization of her financial and existential woes that follows her wherever she goes. Boosting keeps her ahead of it, ever so slightly, while she tries to find herself. The other two members seem to have a stronger ethos in their work. Mariah (Taylour Paige) sells the boosting as an act of community service. Sade (Naomi Ackie), on the other hand, sees it as one of the vanishingly few ways to provide for her family.

As they continue to get away with it, Smith makes repeated derogatory comments to the press about them and attempts to blame them for the high price of her clothes. After all, if they didn’t steal them, she could charge less. It’s a trick retailers have been trying to pull since the dawn of time, give or take, most recently exposed as nonsense by Walgreens trying it post-COVID. The film effectively deploys it as shorthand for Smith’s moral bankruptcy.

Those comments rile Corvette up, but it isn’t until the 1-2 blows of hearing about Smith rolling out $100,000 suits and seeing that Metro Designer is carrying clothes of her personal designs that she decides the time has come to go all out. They get jobs with a Metro Designer branch managed by the always perfectly color-coded Grayson (Will Poulter, just having a blast) and staffed by two union agitators in the making, Violeta (Eiza González) and Mansion (Najah Bradley). Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a worker from Smith’s China-based clothing factories, derails their plans. Arriving with what appears to be a magic bag, she beats them to the punch.

There’s a lot more plot before, during, and after that, including TV men and women on the street, Pinky Ring Guy (LaKeith Stanfield) and his mesmerizing eyes, and especially… potent gift for oral sex, Dr. Jack’s (Don Cheadle) path to wealth, skinless influencers, international teleportation devices designed to save shipping costs, and plenty more. Whatever one’s feelings on I Love Boosters, there’s no denying it is a film overflowing with ideas and incident.

Some of the satire hits. The “random citizens” on the news bit is a background gag that graduates to astute (if conspiracy-tinged) commentary. Dr. Jack’s scheme, complete with its signature illustration acting as an unapologetic confession, hits just right in its bluntness. It is a funny way to highlight the dark tendency people have to not just pull up the ladder after themselves, but, instead of helping, use others to stay on top.

However, the central one about labor, the importance of organizing, and how corporations will use anything, even art, to hide their transgressions, feels almost naïve. It recalls a criticism of the Barbie film where some labeled it a kind of “Feminism 101”. This is “Collective Action 101”. That would be fine as these things go, except the film pairs it with a side of “look, if people just knew how good it was for them, they’d do it yesterday”. That’s a hopeful leftist canard that, unfortunately, has been repeatedly shown to be untrue.

Riley doesn’t owe us a map to revolution, nor would that likely make an especially engaging film. Still, when what amounts to a magic ray (that includes an “acceleration” switch, no less) starts creating class consciousness, it doesn’t feel joyful. The film can visualize the systems of our oppression, but when it comes to a bright new day, it can only offer fantasy. It hits like an accidental confession that hard work can’t get us there. It’s bleak by accident.

Again, though, there is so much I want to point out that makes the film a valuable watch, even if it doesn’t deliver on its themes. It is a beautiful-looking movie. The use of color is both illustrative and fun. The set dressing, the costuming, the makeup—each one is a work of art unto itself. Riley, working with cinematographer Natasha Braier, creates a surefooted and exciting visual language and setting for the film. The score by Alina Kanin, combined with music supervisor Cheryl Wang’s lyrical song choices, delivers an unusual and compelling sonicscape. Some late stop-motion animation ups the surrealism without breaking the carefully crafted world. And it is frequently funny, in obvious and sly ways alike.

In the end, I Love Boosters is a film that demands attention even if it doesn’t realize all its ambitions. There’s too much talent on-screen and behind the lens to write it off.

I Love Boosters is now liberating merchandise in theatres everywhere.

I Love Boosters Trailer: