Nobody is doing it like Boots Riley. Seriously.
I Love Boosters is Riley's newest surrealist satire, with a star-studded cast including Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Demi Moore, and many more. It centres on Corvette (Keke Palmer), an aspiring fashion designer who earns her living as a booster: a professional shoplifter who steals designer clothing to resell at a discounted price. After fashion designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore) steals one of Corvette's designs, she and her friends set out to bring down her fashion empire, and chaos ensues.
One thing a film about fashion needs is great costumes, and I Love Boosters does not disappoint on that front. Shirley Kurata curated a whimsical and unique wardrobe for each of the characters, which perfectly showcases their personalities. Her use of colour combined with the production design and the film's bright colour grading come together to create incredibly memorable visuals.
The film also makes use of the cast's great physical comedy and wonderfully bizarre, dreamlike practical effects. The effects aren't particularly realistic, but realism is clearly not the goal, giving the film a surrealist feel that elevates its themes of anti-capitalism and consumerism. There is a later scene involving stop-motion claymation that I won't spoil, but its absurdity catches you completely off guard.
Boots Riley's script, besides being pretty funny, is an interesting look at our society's obsession with consumption in its most extreme form. Corvette has these hallucinations of a massive ball of receipts and overdue bills that follow her around, and every time Christie Smith speaks about her work, it's a whole lot of nothing. They both embody two kinds of people this society creates: a working-class person haunted by financial troubles but full of creativity and ideas, and a vapid billionaire who steals all of those ideas for her own profit.
I Love Boosters is a bright and colourful critique of capitalism, with exactly the kind of weird twists you would expect from Boots Riley. So if you're in the mood for a positively wacky cinematic experience, go see for yourself when it arrives in cinemas later this year. I can assure you it is anything but ordinary.
And don't forget to stay after the credits: there's a post-credits scene!
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