I Love Boosters Review: Boots Riley's Bombastic, Surreal Heist Comedy Messily Dismantles The Oligarchy In Plasticized Technicolor

Leave it to Boots Riley to attempt the seemingly impossible task of taking on the impossible, yet again: creating a sharp critique of the oligarchy that still works as a boisterous, barn-burning, popcorn flick. I Love Boosters feels like its bursting out of Riley's most nagging frustrations and anger, but also out of his love for the people on the front lines. He wants to attack the systems that perpetuate themselves off the backs of working class people, but he also wants to communicate an uncommon kind of love for his fellow human, too. If it was human nature that created predatory capitalism, then surely that means we can dismantle it, too.

With I Love Boosters, Riley takes it upon himself to kick leftist pessimism to the curb. Through The Velvet Gang - a merry band of professional shoplifters whose exploits have reached the highest echelons of news coverage - Riley looks to empower us. In lieu of powerlessness, Riley asks for a genuine, heart-forward approach to labor activism and cultural solidarity. The film is less concentrated in focus than Sorry to Bother You, but its certainly just as fun. All of its heavy didacticism is rooted in an absurd, gang-busters heist of a kind you've never seen before.

I Love Boosters Simultaneously Thrills and Empowers In Galvanizing Manner

At the heart of this gonzo Ocean's 11 is Corvette (Keke Palmer), an aspiring fashion designer who has kneecapped herself through an assumption that her stylistic choices are "too weird." Instead of pursuing that career in earnest, she and the rest of the Gang - Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige) - spend most of their days looting fast fashion outlets and reselling them at a discount. They're the boosters of the title and, presumably, Riley is the "I." He adores this mini sisterhood of devil-may-care rebels and encourages them on through a distinct style with a loose fourth wall that aesthetically borrows from everyone from Spike Lee to Pedro Almodóvar to Pee-wee Herman.

As their journey continues, Riley uses a panoply of antiquated transitions, modernized for 2026: wipes via burning papers, match cuts out of double-tracking zoom shots, to name a couple. He uses these moves to paint The Velvet Gang as both old and new, a group of harmless criminals that are very good at getting away with it all, even though they aren't particularly graceful. In one such theft, Sade stuffs her pink velour jumpsuit with goods and walks out looking like the Michelin Man if he wore Juicy brand clothing. Their skill at stealing is not equaled by their ability to turn a profit, either, with Corvette having to live inside an abandoned chicken shack restaurant.

But when Christie Smith (Demi Moore), a high-fashion designer in the vein of Will Ferrell's Mugatu and Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly, goes on a public media storm lambasting the Velvet Gang, they decide to attack - from within. They get hired at one of her local stores by manager Grayson (Will Poulter), a soft-spoken company man who weaponizes therapy speak to justify cutting wages. Smith is the kind of high-powered maniac who boasts of her exploitation, a billionaire that Riley uses as a proxy to wryly suggest that our richest citizens act above the law, and certainly above public perception.

It's around this time, Corvette discovers Christie has stolen her prized dress design, and her admiration for the nakedly fascistic businesswoman turns to a seething red desire for vengeance. But their plan to loot every one of her stores is disrupted by Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a manic and righteously angry Chinese laborer who has stolen Christie's company's teleporter (yes, teleporter) to steal back all of the clothes her factory has made. Her goal is to get Christie to relent to worker demands for higher wages and better working conditions, which fits in well with the Velvet Gang's desire for money and revenge. Add in Eiza Gonzalez, who plays a former employee turned strike captain, and The Velvet Gang is now complete.

So much happens in I Love Boosters with so many intricate layers of narrative design that its easy to get lost in Riley's distinctive sauce. None of the above even takes into account a wild subplot involving LaKeith Stanfield, who plays a lothario that gives such good cunnilingus he ends up sucking the souls out of the women he pleasures. Riley's film is bonkers and surrealistically hilarious, and though his overly ambitious approach can weaken the overall effect, its still in service of accentuating the sheer stupidity of living under capitalism when the gap between the haves and the have-nots is at its widest.

At the core of I Love Boosters - underneath all of the wildness, the sight gags, the lurid puns, the overt sexuality - is the tension of wanting to destroy the very same system we have to live in. As if to make that fight indelibe, the eccentric, brass-heavy band Tune Yards offers up a musical score that is both pleasurable and discordant. That fight is further characterized by the relationship between Corvette and Sade; while the former seems to dismantle, the latter wants to take advantage of it. Riley wonders if its possible to achieve both.

It is, ultimately, a film completely uninterested in subtlety. That's both to its credit and to its detriment. It makes John Carpenter's They Live seem tame by comparison. Probably the most egregious in this regard is that Corvette is infrequently chased by an Indiana Jones-like boulder made up of bills, notices and tickets. But it's hard to blame Riley for a lack of subtlety when the people who pull the levers aren't subtle about what they do. It's not a question of complicity. It's a question of what you will do about it.

I Love Boosters screened at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival.

Release Date May 22, 2026

Director Boots Riley

Writers Boots Riley