Boots Riley’s new film I Love Boosters is a vivid, politically charged, and visually imaginative follow-up to Sorry to Bother You, marked by bold practical effects, striking color design, and a sharply satirical view of capitalism. The film centers on Corvette, played by Keke Palmer, a stylish and resourceful shoplifter who steals high-end designer clothes and resells them at lower prices to people who could not otherwise afford them. Palmer’s performance is presented as one of the film’s major strengths, with the actor shifting through numerous costumes, hairstyles, and makeup looks while delivering a mix of comic energy and emotional intensity.
The story follows Corvette and her friends in the Velvet Gang as they carry out elaborate theft schemes while navigating the luxury fashion world. Their target is Christie Smith, a cutting-edge designer played by Demi Moore, whose brand has become a symbol of elitism, exploitation, and self-importance. Smith runs a highly controlled fashion empire built on expensive clothes, image-making, and corporate-style management language, while treating workers and customers as accessories to her artistic vision. When Corvette infiltrates Smith’s orbit, the film expands into a conflict between petty theft and larger systems of labor exploitation.
Riley uses surreal comedy and satirical exaggeration to show how retail, fashion, and management culture operate. One sequence features a gravity-defying office and a physical gag involving a coffee cart, while another shows the absurdity of store labor rules, including employees being forced to buy the brand-new clothes they must wear on the job. The film also includes a unionizing effort led by a worker named Violeta, who begins organizing colleagues after discovering how little they are paid and how little time they are given to rest. These scenes underline the film’s central concern with wage labor, hierarchy, and the many forms of hidden exploitation inside consumer capitalism.
The review praises Riley’s commitment to practical effects, his willingness to “show the seams,” and his refusal to imitate the polished style of mainstream studio filmmaking. It also highlights supporting performances from Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Will Poulter, LaKeith Stanfield, Don Cheadle, and Poppy Liu. At the same time, the film is described as becoming more crowded and less focused in its second half, as the plot expands into multiple directions, including a China-based factory storyline and a sci-fi device used to intensify contradictions and deconstruct objects.
Even with its narrative sprawl, I Love Boosters is presented as an unusually fresh and politically direct film, one that offers a rare alternative to conventional Hollywood ideology. The piece concludes that Riley’s energy, visual imagination, and left-wing perspective make the movie a standout theatrical experience worth seeing more than once.
