Boots Riley holds nothing back in his audacious, surrealist social satire “I Love Boosters.” The film is a go-for-broke expression of wild imagination and social consciousness that’s impossible not to admire for its wacky, bold vision, with teleporting, high fashion snobbery and pyramid schemes.Here is a movie where we get Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie and Taylour Paige leading a vigilante shoplifting operation, Demi Moore as a toxic girl boss, Don Cheadle as a sleazy lifestyle evangelist, Will Poulter as a fussy store manager and LaKeith Stanfield as a discount brand model with a strange accent and a hypnotizing stare. It sounds like fun, right? Like a raucous, madcap ride through the inequities of the fashion business from the executive suite, down to the retail store where the goods are sold and the Chinese factories where they’re made? And on a certain level it is all of that, but one thing it is not is very funny. “I Love Boosters” can be amusing and clever, but the laugh-out-loud comedy just isn’t quite there. And it doesn’t help that the film goes more off the rails as it progresses to a climax that is less rousing than mind-numbing.
The thing is, “I Love Boosters” does start on a strong, albeit minor key as we’re introduced to the Velvet Gang, Corvette (Palmer), Sade (Ackie) and Mariah (Paige) and their booster operation, stealing overpriced designer wares from high end stores and selling them for a steep discount on the street. There’s a kind of a Robin Hood sensibility to it all. Mariah calls it “Triple F,” or “Fashion Forward Filanthropy.” She knows how to spell philanthropy, she deadpans; This is branding.
