I Love Boosters
**Seen at the 2026 Atlanta Film Festival
In “Sorry to Bother You” and “I Love Boosters,” Boots Riley is taking somewhat familiar ideas and themes, and inverting them with genre silliness. I loved how it worked out in his 2018 film, but “I Love Boosters” even feels too outlandish for him. The problem is the emotional underpinnings of the story do not land as much with this film as they did with “Sorry to Bother You.” I really enjoy the ideas, and the visual landscape is terrific, but it didn’t connect me to the characters the way it should have.
Corvette (Keke Palmer), Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige) are boosters. They steal the latest fashions off of store racks, and sell them on the streets at discounted prices. They have it down to an art form, and for them, it is a form of “community service” that lines their pockets. Their biggest target becomes a fashion chain created by Christine Smith (Demi Moore), a prodigy who used her mathematical mind to figure out what becomes the “in” fashion in the world. Like the boosters, she sees herself as a public servant, hopeful that her clothes can work towards the betterment of humanity; think a fashionista Steve Jobs. She is getting ready to launch a new line, and the boosters are ready to take it all. When they find themselves intertwined with the labor rights movement in Christine’s factories through a worker (Jianpu, played by Poppy Liu), they learn that this is a lot bigger than they realize.
Riley’s ability to find biting social satire remains on point. Even if the emotional connections with the characters do not land, their plights are palpable, and we can see how they feel like they have a certain responsibility to the world- or, at least, their world- to bring some sense of balance between the haves and have nots. Even with the bringing in of a lot of the genre elements, the satire- especially when it comes to high fashion chains (giving us a ridiculously funny performance by Will Poulter as a snobby store manager)- still feels grounded in reality, including when we find out the truth about MLM gurus and influencers. Moore is building off of her stellar work in “The Substance” here, matching the energy of all the lead women, as well as LaKeith Stanfield as a weird man who feels a connection with the women. There is dazzling production design and costumes, as well as a wonderful sequence that includes stop-motion visual effects, but it’s more entertaining and silly than insightful in how the world works. Even at the end, we don’t feel like we’ve gone on an emotional journey with the characters, even though we’ve certainly gone on a crazy narrative one. That being said, I’ll take a movie that swings as big as this one over one whose commentary is only skin deep.
