Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Boots Riley. Were the horse people a put-off? Don’t worry; Boots Riley has much more where that came from. I Love Boosters is one of those films where you leave the theater calculating the bizarre in your head and wondering what you had just seen … but in a good way, for nobody quite combines the normal and the supernatural quite like Boots Riley.
On it’s face, this film is just a catalog of, you know, boosters: people [read: women] wh0 steal from fashion outlets and eke a living out of secondhand sales. In one of my favorite openings ever, Corvette (Keke Palmer) lures a man from a nightclub up to her space. “What’s your shoe size?” is her hook. Most adults know size of feet in men is related to the size of their … shoe. The suitor is proud to announce he’s a size 12. Corvette will be impressed, surely. She beckons him to follow. Her place is near. Thinking he’s gonna get some from the hot vixen, the suitor follows blindly to a ratty apartment across the street stuffed to the brim with … clothes.
He’s not gonna get some. She wants to sell him shoes. Boosted shoes. Boosted shoes for a discount. Italian leather. A bargain at $70. Probably go for at least twice that in stores. “Size 12 did you say?” The man, as men are apt to do, is openly frustrated about the distinct lack of physicality presented to him. He’s about to storm out, but common sense gets the better of him. A steal is a steal, after all. “Italian leather, did you say?”
“Yes. ‘Size 12,’ did you say?”
“Size 10.”
OMG, that was the funniest thing I’ve heard in weeks. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with size 10; it is a perfectly respectable shoe size. Corvette, Sade (Naomi Ackie), and Mariah (Taylour Paige) boost clothes and live together in an abandoned & boarded up chicken restaurant. I love that these women actually have jobs; just because you’ve got employment doesn’t mean you can afford rent, especially in the Bay Area. Known as The Velvet Gang, these three get jobs in posh Metro Designer outlets, run by evil CEO Christie Smith (Demi Moore).
And this is where Boots Riley starts having fun with us – Each Metro outlet has a new color every month. When we first see one, the clothes and staff are all decked in shades of green. It’s both hideous and triumphant at the same time. You know, I’ve seen three films about the fashion industry this year (The Devil Wears Prada 2, Mother Mary, Marc by Sofia) … none of them had half as much to say about fashion as I Love Boosters. And at the same time we are inundated by retail madness, the film introduces us to the villain; she has an office in a building that literally leans. Why? It doesn’t matter. Just enjoy.
I haven’t come anywhere close to hinting about the truly ridiculous stuff in this film … or my favorite part, when we learn that otherwise-obsolete-yet-certainly-cryptic character Pinky Ring Guy (LaKeith Stanfield) is a demon. How do we know he’s a demon? He sucks souls from women, and I cannot tell you how. Suffice to say it guarantees the R rating.
There are moments in some films in which I feel like a director is speaking to me and only me. I have no idea why the most recent two times this has happened (Freaky Tales), it has happened in a film based in Oakland. That seems fitting, me-wise. In consecutive scenes, I Love Boosters showed a film-within-a-film directed by Jean-Luc Dogard (Obviously a play on noted French director Jean-Luc Godard) –ok, that’s reference one; you’ve already limited your audience to people who know pretentious French film- and then, in the very next scene, we see two Chinese folks greet one another with, and I’m not kidding here, the same patter that 11-year-old Lindsay Lohan and Simon Kunz greet one another with in The Parent Trap (!)
Who the Hell else is gonna know the name Jean-Luc Godard and the fun handshake from the remake of The Parent Trap? Seriously, who?
Even if I didn’t like this film, I’d have to upgrade it on that count alone. But I did like I Love Boosters. I liked it a great deal. Yes, it was bizaaaaaaaaaare. Yes, it didn’t make a tremendous amount of sense, but God help you if it didn’t keep your interest. And God help you 
more if you think this film was just about theft and survival. Boots Riley has quickly become one of my favorite directors. At this point, I can only fault him for being too ambitious.
I’ve been writing about film and trends in film for decades now. My long-time readers -assuming I have any- will note I have often had negative words for Tyler Perry. I hate his films. I hate how one-dimensional, imbecilic, and basic they are. I hate his screenplays. I hate his direction. I don’t actually loathe the actor Tyler Perry, well, unless he’s playing his signature creation, Madea. This has nothing to do with cross-dressing or trans behavior; I just find Madea about funny as a headache. Mostly what I hated was that I felt Tyler Perry had sucked all the air out of the room. When Tyler Perry hit his stride, he represented roughly 95% of Black entertainment on the big screen. Given how poorly his films turned out, this seemed like a double whammy and a huge injustice to the Black community. I knew that community was capable of so much more than Madea Gets Electrocuted or whatever.
And here is the proof.
In American theaters right now, there are three separate quality films made by and starring Black Americans: I Love Boosters, Is God Is, and Michael. I don’t think any of these is a perfect film, but they are all Citizen Kane compared to Why Did I Get Married? or Meet the Browns. Did Tyler Perry stifle the creativity of a demographic … or did he pioneer the greater talents waiting in the wings? I have no answer to that question. I just know that once upon a time, the Black community in America had a sad and myopic disposition. Now? At this rate, it’s hard NOT to be excited by Black film.
There once was a woman, Corvette
Who stole everything she could get
Her friends had a plan
To stick it to the man
Aliens? Time traveling? Don’t fret
Rated R, 113 Minutes
Director: Boots Riley
Writer: Boots Riley
Genre: Oak-town!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Lovers of weird
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: If you ain’t up for bizarre or hyperbolic, this ain’t the film for you
