Boots Riley’s new film, “I Love Boosters,” was a vibrant, anti-capitalist fever dream. Everything about the movie–even down to its official poster–references the era of 1960s crime films such as “How to Steal A Million,” that blend crime, social criticism, and high fashion. This film does all the same things, but for a modern audience.
It was as surreal as a Boots Riley film can be. There are stop motion characters in a world of real people, a building that is tilted at an almost 45-degree angle, though no one mentions it, and a demon model who takes the souls of his romantic partners by going down on them. Yes, you read that right.
The lighting and costumes were also colorful and visually pleasing. I was thanking my lucky stars that the main characters didn’t sacrifice being fashionable in their fight against capitalism!
These elements, alongside the writing and direction of Boots Riley, help to serve the film’s purpose. “I Love Boosters” is a satirical criticism of capitalism with plenty to-die-for fashion moments along the way.
This review will contain spoilers!
The film follows a group of boosters (people that steal and resell clothes) called the Velvet Gang. When one of the boosters, Corvette (Keke Palmer), discovers that CEO and fashion designer, Christie Smith (Demi Moore), stole one of her designs and is selling it at her Metro Designers store, Corvette and her friends plan to steal from as many Metro Designers locations as they can.
Their cover: getting hired to work at the store.
At the same time, executives at the Metro Designers’ factory in China decide to implement teleportation devices to cut shipping costs. The employees also ask for better pay and working conditions, but Christie refuses to meet their demands. One of the employees, Jianhu (Poppy Liu), steals the device and teleports herself to America, where she plans to send all Metro Designers supply back to China until their demands are met. Eventually, she joins the Velvet Gang as they all have a vendetta against Christie.
The way the employees are treated in this film is one of the most obvious critiques of capitalism.
They have to sprint to their lunch break, which is absurdly thirty seconds long, while the manager, Grayson (Will Poulter), gets a full hour. Corvette’s coworker, Violeta (Eiza González), gets a paycheck that is about $43,000, but after the company deducts money for employee uniforms and other costs, the check is reduced to just over $43. It’s over the top, but it gets the point across!
Christie Smith is a symbol of capitalism in general and the “one percent.” She was livid that the boosters were stealing from her, meanwhile, she had already taken Corvette’s design and passed it off as her own. Christie also buys into her own self-importance and convinces others to believe her lies too, using propaganda.
Throughout the film, there are a handful of side characters, such as Dr. Jack (Don Cheadle), who disguises his pyramid scheme as a self-help program, and Crying Black Mother (Kara Young), a woman on the news who says she wouldn’t want people to “bear the burden of free housing.”
She and the others seem unimportant until the final act, where it is revealed they have been working for Christie the entire time, having had their skin surgically removed so they can wear the skin of other people and promote Christie’s ideologies undercover.
They represent people who have bought into capitalist propaganda so much that they will sacrifice their own skin (their wellbeing) to keep the system going.
One of the “skin people” says she once acted as Candace Owens! This could be taken solely as a dig at Candace, but there’s a bigger message behind it. It symbolizes how all media can be a tool to control the narrative. People with platforms, big or small, can influence the public and get them to support things that benefit the system but harm themselves.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Boots Riley movie without LaKeith Stanfield, who plays the demon model, also known as Pinky Ring Guy. His entrance to the film is jarring as he suddenly appears with no warning in an extreme, borderline invasive close-up, while Corvette is stealing from Metro Designers. Though he helps Corvette and her friends infiltrate Christie’s fashion show in the final act, the character’s purpose in the larger message of the film isn’t clear. On the surface he mostly adds to the surrealism, but in retrospect, it’s possible he represents the concept of sacrificing your soul for pleasure.
Most of his rare appearances in the film are when Corvette is in the middle of a plan with the boosters, and he tries to get her to go out with him. He could represent the temptation to give up the fight and give in to pleasure as a means of numbing oneself in the face of uncertainty. Or maybe he just symbolizes the bums we put up with to escape loneliness, who will actually suck the life out of us if we let them. Either way, Corvette rejects him completely, showing that she isn’t willing to give up her soul.
Refreshingly, the film doesn’t just criticize the problems with a capitalistic society; it offers solutions.
One being that we are most effective in fighting the system when we work together.
Throughout the movie, Corvette hallucinates a giant ball of trash filled with overdue bills and eviction notices coming towards her, representing the dread and isolation of looming societal expectations. She also mentions many times that she feels alone.
As the film goes on, Corvette and the Velvet Gang gradually expand their circle, working with others to achieve a specific goal. By the end, Corvette isn’t alone anymore, and the giant ball of trash becomes small enough to pick up and throw away. It shows that fighting alone can be unbearable, but the way to handle the burden is by uniting.
At the end of the day, we have more in common than we think.
Another interesting detail is that the teleportation device has two other settings: deconstruction mode, which reverts objects into the raw materials that made them, and situational acceleration mode, which accelerates objects into what they will be in the future.
Deconstruction mode represents that the system doesn’t necessarily need to be destroyed. We need to take a closer look at the individual moving parts and understand how it works so we can rebuild it. Situational Acceleration mode represents future possibilities.
In the final act, there is a protest at Christie’s fashion show. On one side are the protestors, on the other, those who were guests invited to the show. When the boosters use acceleration mode on everyone, we see what they will be in the future: both sides are protesting together. When Corvette and her friend Sade (Naomie Ackie) accidentally accelerate a police car, it becomes a futuristic vehicle with all kinds of weaponry and destructive features. But when they accelerate the people, it makes them into a version of themselves that depicts unity.
That is how they win.
The film’s ending leaves us with a sense of hope. The Velvet Gang opens a community center to sell clothes, and Christie has to comply with the demands of the people who work in the Metro Designers factory.
It shows that regardless of how bad the world gets, future generations will still unite and fight for something better. This conveys a future of unity, a future that is hopeful in the face of bleakness, and it's a message the world needs to hear.