I Love Boosters

Grade: C-

I Love Boosters is like if John Waters and Wes Anderson collaborated on a project. It lays out a nice plot, with a journey I was interested in following, only to pile on ingredient after ingredient until it becomes a runaway train of sound and fury signifying nothing. At any given moment, I was confused, annoyed, or bored, and I’d had just about enough of it before it was halfway through. Writer/director Boots Riley was the man behind Sorry to Bother You – my favorite comedy of 2018, if not the decade. 

“Boosters” is a term used here to describe a trio of regular shoplifters at various locations of a clothing store chain called Metro Designers. They “boost” items from this place, and – for reasons I was never sure about – sell them at lower prices. They are Corvette (Keke Palmer), Mariah (Taylour Paige), and Sade (Naomi Ackie). Demi Moore plays Christie Smith, who runs Metro Designers. She knows she is routinely being boosted, and is on a mission to find them.

This cat-and-mouse setup would have been enough for me, but instead the movie does more and more and more. As it’s from the writer/director of Sorry to Bother You, we can expect some offbeat tangents, but everything is taken to a point where you almost forget what movie you started with. Christie’s office is in a building that leans, like Pisa. Everyone has learned to navigate the slanted floors, except apparently Corvette. In a scene that’s as funny as it is extended, her arms and legs flail around like in a Looney Tunes cartoon, as she desperately tries to make it back up to the door.

There’s a running gag where each Metro Designers location only sells one color. If you want yellow, go to the yellow store. If you want blue, go across town to the blue store, and so on. It’s a forced opportunity for the cinematographers and costume designers to flex. Riley has put together an impressive cast. Aside from the aforementioned, we also have LaKeith Stanfield, Adam Devine, Don Cheadle, Viggo Mortensen, Will Poulter, Eiza González (In the Grey), and Kara Young (Is God Is).

If you want alcohol poisoning, take a drink every time that main theme song comes on. You’ll get to know it better than you’d ever wish you had. It’s the one that goes “hi hi hey ho, hi hi hey hi, hey ho.” It gets repeated and repeated and repeated. What I don’t remember as well is the ending. It is so far off the rails by the time we get to the conclusion, that I was apathetic, and just happy to be done with it. The narrative goes haywire into a colorful cacophony. I Love Boosters manages to throw everything at us and still be boring.

Grade: C-