Boots Riley might be the only filmmaker right now who takes that Garth Marenghi quote turned meme “I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards” as a personal challenge. 2018’s Sorry to Bother You tackled everything from class solidarity to how Armie Hammer is a psychopath before it became public knowledge and made me an instant fan with its leftist ideals and satire. His 2023 series I’m A Virgo, his own take on the superhero genre, doubled down on his absurdist realism style and ends with such a scathing takedown of how capitalism encourages violence and poverty that I’m still convinced that someone on Amazon greenlit the show by mistake.
I Love Boosters, while not connected to either of these, feels like a conclusion to the themes present in both of them. And just like with those previous works, Riley has once again delivered a film that’s a crowd pleasing good time while taking his leftist commentary and satire to even more extremes and I loved every second of it.
Boosters, for the uninitiated, are shoplifters who sell their stolen wares at a discount price. Corvette, played by Keke Palmer, leads a group of these boosters nicknamed The Velvet Gang. They regularly steal the clothes of fashion mogul Christy Smith, played by Demi Moore, in an act they dub “Fashion Forward Philanthropy.” Despite the regular degradation Christy posts online about The Velvet Gang, Corvette admires and wants to be a designer like Christy one day. That is until she realizes the mogul stole a design Corvette once submitted to a contest she didn’t win. And what follows is equal part revenge tale, heist thriller, absurdist comedy, and even sci-fi adventure that had me gripped from beginning to end.
What makes Riley’s filmmaking so phenomenal for me is how he manages to go from strange to bizarre at the drop of that hat but it never feels like he’s tackling too much. There’s an unpredictability that Riley’s scripts feature and while always insane it never feels random but instead expands upon the satire and the world the characters inhabit. It’s a tightrope act juggling all the material that he constantly throws at you as one moment you’ll be seeing a heist planning sequence with a smooth montage ala Ocean’s 11 only to be greeted by a sequence of a parasitic demon performing cunnilingus and sucking the soul out of woman’s vagina with creature effects ripped out of an 80s horror film. And while seeing that typed out might sound like the most random thing in the world in context it feels natural.
I Love Boosters is another masterpiece from Boots Riley and in a crowded field of fantastic movies that have released this year already shot to the forefront of my favorite films of 2026. See it on a big screen and see it with a crowd if possible.
5/5
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