The deep weirdo energy of Oakland, California is both upheld and reaffirmed in “I Love Boosters,” writer-director Boots Riley’s strange fantasia about fashion, capitalism and corporate greed run amok in San Francisco’s Bay Area.
It’s so overstuffed with ideas and imagination that it overwhelms itself, but what a lovely problem to have in an age of AI, IP and creative homogeneity.
Riley’s follow-up to 2018’s “Sorry to Bother You” makes that film, which was completely bonkers in its own right, look linear by comparison.
Keke Palmer plays Corvette, who is part of a ring of shoplifters — along with Mariah (Taylour Paige) and Sade (Naomi Ackie) — in Oakland. Together they’re known as the Velvet Gang, and their morals pertain to the three Fs: “Fashion. Forward. Filanthropy.” (Well, two out of three ain’t bad.)
The Velvets are out to take down billionaire fashion mogul Christie Smith (Demi Moore), whose fashion empire steals from the very people she’s attempting to sell back to.
So they aim to empty the racks at her monochromatic retail shops — the production design by Christopher Glass is truly eye-popping, as are the costumes by Shirley Kurata — with the help of a vacuum which also happens to be an interdimensional teleportation device.
This is where “I Love Boosters” starts getting really freaky, part “The Devil Wears Prada” and part “Ghostbusters,” with the sensibility of a ’70s variety show mixed with a ’60s sci-fi series.
Riley, who moved to Oakland after spending his early childhood in Detroit, has an anarchist’s agenda and a court jester’s sense of playfulness, and those two sides happily bounce off each other in the upbeat comedy — and pro-workers’ rights messaging — of “Boosters.”
Even when the movie goes off the rails — and this is a movie that starts at Point A and winds up in a completely different galaxy — it retains its sense of mischief-like fun. Even when you’re not sure where it’s headed, it brings viewers along with it every step of the way.
Palmer is one of the reasons it works. Her comedic timing and offbeat sense of humor makes her a perfect fit for Riley’s world, and she and Paige make a formidable team.
“Sorry to Bother You’s” LaKeith Stanfield adds another layer of bizarro energy as a mysterious suitor who happens to be a sex demon, and Will Poulter is magnificently uptight as a catty retail store manager.
It’s Riley’s tactile vision and sense of radical surrealism that come across the most. Oakland has always seemed like its own planet, from the funked-up sex rhymes of Too $hort and Digital Underground to the spaced out vernacular of E-40, and Riley’s chaotic sense of cinematic expression is proudly continuing the tradition. “I Love Boosters” is proof that creativity is alive and well, if you know where to look for it.
agraham@detroitnews.com
‘I Love Boosters’
GRADE: B
Rated R: for strong sexual content, nudity, language throughout and brief drug use
Running time: 113 minutes
In theaters
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: ‘I Love Boosters’: Boots Riley’s freak flag flies in fashion fantasia
Reporting by Adam Graham, Detroit News Film Critic / The Detroit News
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