The biggest relief about Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters is that not much has changed since his first film was released eight years ago. Sure, a lot has happened since then — heck, a lot has happened in the last few weeks — enough so that Riley’s socio-satirical inclinations could have gone a numerous amount of ways. Creating a miniseries about a 13-foot kid may have been in line with his work, but it’s not surprising that the air around his sophomore film feels abuzz with excitement. What will he say this time? And will his movies keep coming out during the country’s worst presidential years?
Riley probably wouldn’t categorize his films as therapeutic sessions in which you laugh to avoid from crying, but I Love Boosters echoes the familiar intrinsic mindfuck between the absurd and the truth. How could one begin to talk about this film? Likely, the conversation can start and end with the effervescent Keke Palmer, the one true prophet. Palmer leads the film’s Velvet Gang as Corvette, an aspiring fashion designer who resorts to boosting (stealing luxury clothes and selling it at a lower cost). The Velvet Gang, as deemed by the media news coverage, is also made up of other women who have their own ways of dealing with reality: Sade (Naomi Ackie), who attends a nightly life-coaching session led by the suspicious Dr. Jack (Don Cheadle), and Mariah (Taylour Paige), who brings the chaotic energy to their operations. The hill-y streets identify as San Francisco, but the way that the Gang interacts with their surroundings make it feel like a hamster cage, running in circles or at dead ends.
I suppose that I Love Boosters is technically an adaptation of the song “I Love Boosters,” written by Riley’s musical group The Coup. It delineates the importance of the boosters’ line of work for the average person who reasonably can’t drop stacks to look their best, but Riley doesn’t put all of the lyrics on screen. Within their self-described “fashion-forward philanthropy”, the film steadily focuses on Corvette’s distant dynamic with MIT graduate-turned-fashion diva Christie Smith (Demi Moore), who owns the Metro Designer stores that the Velvet Gang has targeted.
Christie publicly calls the Velvet Gang “urban bitches,” an inflammatory term that would spark immediate outrage within the right red-flag system, but this world is intermingled with the world where much worst things have been said within this calendar year. Her hostility toward the thieves makes way for a fascinating mutualism between Christie, a representative of the haute couture that both despises and depends on her customers that she considers beneath her, and the said consumers who steal yet support the work. I have no doubt that Christie’s line of thinking is shared behind closed corporate doors. Heck, we witnessed it when the CEO of McDonald’s had practically whimpered before taking a bite of the company’s most famous product for an ad. Christie might not love her boosters, but she needs them for the cultural drive of her products. Whether she’ll make her unethical millions from it is debatable.
It may be surprising that I Love Boosters is Neon’s most expensive film to date at $20 million (which, considering the banger years they’ve had in the past year, should be studied by the big studios). If that budget wasn’t mainly for the cast, it must have been toward the big-brain concepts from costume designer Shirley Kurata. I truly don’t know if this movie would have stood out with Kurata’s trained eye for the camp, the elegant, or streetwear. As someone who was able to make Evelyn’s red vest in Everything Everywhere All at Once, Kurata is able to create a separate language spoken between the Velvet Gang and Christie’s trickle-down evil, whether it’s the neon monochromatic outfits that store associates have to pay out of pocket or the dull pink worker’s overall at the exploited factory in China. A lot of formal recognition for costume design tends to coincide with the film’s expected world (corsets in a period piece? nailed it!), so much can be appreciated with Kurata steaming ahead with telling us with what is fashion or garbage or “…huh, okay” within this world.
As knowing a white person who once said that they didn’t finish We Need to Talk About White People because they didn’t agree with the book, I won’t be surprised at any pushback that Riley may receive. And even on an entertainment level, I admit that I’m not picking up everything that’s put down (Lakeith Stanfield’s role as a soul-sucking demon pushed the envelope a bit too far for me), but I am going to scrapbook the moments that tickle me: Jianhu (Poppy Liu)’s translation of American gun sounds (“Pew, pew – oh wait. BWAP BWAP!”), Palmer’s delivery of “does he eat ass?” (meme-queen status cemented once again!), a quick little cameo from Robin Thede. Riley’s storytelling is brazen, flagrant, and stylish. Because it feels like everything he’d want this movie to be, even hating it feels like a compliment.
I Love Boosters
2026
dir. Boots Riley
113 min.
Opens Friday, 5/22 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre, Somerville Theatre, West Newton Cinema, Kendall Square Cinema, Alamo Drafthouse Boston Seaport, and all local AMCs
