I Love Boosters

I love Boots, but I can't say I love Boots' movies. After the rapper, producer, and activist branched into filmmaking with his anarchically messy but unquestionably memorable debut, the gonzo takedown of American capitalism and culture Sorry to Bother You (2018), I was hopeful that Boots Riley's sophomore effort would be a little more focused, pointed, and transformative a social satire. Unfortunately, I Love Boosters is even more undercut by Riley's everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to storytelling, and, rather than reach beyond the major critical and modest commercial success of Sorry to Bother You, I think this picture will be instantly forgotten.

The story follows three enterprising young female "boosters" (Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie and Taylour Paige) who have turned shoplifting into a political act, as well as an effective hustle. This trio, known as the Velvet Gang, has perfected the art of distracting overworked clerks and smuggling designer clothes out of high-end boutiques so they can sell them at affordable prices to galz n da hood. The film starts off promising, with Riley making the point that shoplifting is as built into the system of capitalism as is the concept of wholesale and retail. But Riley isn't interested in fully exploring this world (a world that hasn't changed much since DeMane Davis and Khari Streeter made the underseen Lift twenty-five years ago, so if you want to see an engaging film on this subject, check that one out). Riley is the kind of artist who has so many ideas and so much to say, that he attempts to cram it all in to each project. That can often work in music, but it's deadly for cinema.

I Love Boosters quickly devolves into a chaotic collection of half-thought-out ideas and distracting subplots that don't fit together without characters occasionally showing up to explain things and a magical teleporter device that has the power to solve narrative loopholes faster than you can say "deus ex machina.' It's all delivered with the type of earsplitting sound mix and overly colorful imagery that can never sustain its impact for the length of a feature film. By the time we reach the climax, in which the Velvet Gang exacts revenge on their nemesis, a cutthroat fashion maven named Christie Smith (Demi Moore), at Smith's fashion show, we've lost all interest in the substantive motivations of these women and the many other characters they've teamed up with.

Riley is a great raconteur, and an extremely entertaining and personable guy with a well-defined political agenda and a gift for putting his ideas across verbally and musically. Listening to him speak at the extended Q&A that followed the packed screening that kicked off this year's Independent Film Festival Boston, I was amazed at how eloquently he could answer even the dumbest or most pretentious questions; effortlessly spinning his responses into seemingly off-the-cuff expressions of his views or amusing anecdotes about the film's production all while providing a genuine answer to each query. I think this is the only time in my history of attending film festivals where I would have given the movie 1 or 2 stars and the Q&A 4 or 5.

Being so energized by hearing Riley speak makes it all the more disheartening that he's applied his eclectic approach to music making to his filmmaking, rather than his sharp oratory skills. One might think that music production would have more in common with filmmaking than public speaking, but that's not the case, especially when you are making films with a political message. When you're trying to win people over to a movement or a series of ideas, you need to be able to sustain a message over a longer period of time than three or four minutes. You need to leave people invigorated rather than exhausted. I was exhausted by I Love Boosters, but invigorated by the Q&A. What Boots probably needs is to collaborate with a talented screenwriter who can help him focus his ideas into a cohesive narrative that enables him to take his comedic flights of fancy without constantly eviscerating the viewer's investment in the characters. But Riley seems to be a victim of the auteur theory and the way that seventy year-old concept has been perverted into too many filmmakers believing that they must be the sole writer/director in order to be a true cinematic artist. Boots is a proclaimed communist, but auteurism is as antithetical to communism as commercial cinema is to anti-capitalism. Still, I'm a film believer that one can make engaging pro-union, anti-corporate, revolutionary art via the medium of cinema, but only of filmmakers are willing to bend their vision to fit the needs of their story, rather than the other way around.