by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, Demi Moore
Intro:
… for those who like their movies good and weird, you’re gonna love these boosters.
In 1993, The Coup and its front man Boots Riley made their studio album debut with Kill Your Landlord. Over the next nearly-two-decades, Riley only became more outspoken and incendiary, infusing The Coup’s bug-eyed funk beats with lyricism that was as politically conscious as it was wilfully humorous. His work with The Coup essentially crafted a catalogue of Marxist party jams that have endeared themselves to a lot of old heads and crossovers from the punk and metal scenes, and while his literary yet irreverent style turned tracks like ‘The Guillotine’ and ‘BabyLet’sHaveABabyBeforeBushDoSomethin’Crazy’ into certified brainy bangers, the past handful of years have seen him translate that skill to visual art with equal intensity.
From his debut Sorry to Bother You, a fiery takedown of the U.S. class system via the soul-deadening of telemarketing, to the streaming series I’m A Virgo, a bonkers superhero flip that’s akin to a retroactive rebuttal to John Stewart’s backstory in the recent Lanterns show, he is as much a premium cinematic absurdist as he is a legend of Bay Area hip hop. And that wrecking ball trajectory continues into his latest feature.
Much like Sorry to Bother You, the inspiration for I Love Boosters comes from The Coup’s back catalogue. Where Sorry to Bother You and its race performativity were expanded from ‘Pimps (Free Stylin’ at the Fortune 500 Club)’, with David Rockefeller doing his best ‘rap voice’ while Trump growls out some Jamaican Patois, I Love Boosters comes from the track of the same name off the 2006 LP Pick A Bigger Weapon. The film follows a lot of that song’s storytelling, depicting a group of Oakland women who make a living off hitting licks on clothing stores and selling off the merchandise, and expanding on its statements about fashion as an indicator of social status, the industry’s backbone of sweatshop labour, and how the theft itself is as much a form of illicit entrepreneurship as it is a protest against the capitalist system.
However, pure political rhetoric doesn’t even come close to describing the experience of watching the film. While its bright coordinated colours, both in costuming and set design, give I Love Booster a gorgeous visual aesthetic, the presentation overall reads like what street fashion would look like as its own bespoke feature: multiple styles and looks mixed together to create a personalised fit. Bo Welch-esque production values mingle with grotesque practical effects that make the Equisapiens from Sorry to Bother You look like light work, plus stop-motion animation reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen, and absurdist philosophical sci-fi that wouldn’t look out-of-place in a film adaptation of Portal as directed by Mamoru Oshii.
The result of this mishmash is a delirious live-action cartoon with a steadfast praxic core, code-switching between Tex Avery and Friedrich Engels to drop knowledge about the injustices performed under capitalism.
Boots Riley basically wields surreal genre textures in a similar way as Jordan Peele, using ostensibly silly ideas and plot points as a delivery system for real and frequently uncomfortable truths about systemic mistreatment. The wonky sound mixing admittedly interferes with some of the more direct agitprop, with Tune-Yards’ fittingly whacked-out soundtrack drowning out a few monologues, but it still manages to convey a lot of cogent criticisms. Couched in a fashionable revenge plot, with booster Corvette (Keke Palmer) striking out against pompous fashion magnate Christie Smith (Demi Moore) for ripping off one of her designs, I Love Boosters details the cultural and social factors that prop up these ‘too big to fail’ corporations, and emphasises the need to forgo short-term personal gain for long-term collective strides. What starts as a group of women trying to make ends meet gradually snowballs into a call for revolution.
I Love Boosters is the wildest trade union PSA you’ll ever lay eyes on. With its recurring quip of “Now is not the time for nuance”, it is adamant and forthright about its politics and anti-capitalist stance to the point of potentially being a bit much for some audiences; if you saw the word ‘Marxist’ above and immediately got the ick, this probably won’t be for you. But when married with visual and sonic presentation that is just as uncompromising and buckwild, the hard-brick politique is made more than palatable through the bewildered cries of “what in the wet blunt rotation am I looking at?!” It is simultaneously an absolute crazy viewing experience, and a thoughtful satire of the American fashion industry and American society as a whole; for those who like their movies good and weird, you’re gonna love these boosters.
