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Riley Moore

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Image for 'I Love Boosters' is a raunchy, outrageous ode to the working class
via: bostonglobe.com

'I Love Boosters' is a raunchy, outrageous ode to the working class

At a club in Oakland, Corvette (Keke Palmer) chats up a guy and invites him back to her apartment. Both parties think they’re going to get lucky; the problem is their definition of “getting lucky” differs greatly. The guy thinks he’s going to get sexed up like Color Me Badd.

Corvette, on the other hand, thinks she’s going to sell some of her boosted goods. These are expensive items that she and her crew, the Velvet Gang, shoplifted from various stores. She marks the loot down to affordable prices and splits the money. Though initially disappointed, the guy knows a good deal when he sees one. He asks if Corvette has the shoes she’s hawking in his size.

So begins “I Love Boosters,” the latest film from writer-director-musician Boots Riley. The follow-up to “Sorry to Bother You” continues that film’s raucous level of surprising plot twists and its pro-worker stance. This time, Riley cranks every element to unimaginable extremes. It’s a movie with a lot on its agenda, so chock full of details that it threatens to overwhelm the viewer. It’s refreshing to see a movie overflowing with ideas, even if some of them fall flat.

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Satire is all about exaggerating reality to make valid points, and Riley clearly got that memo. This is a movie where holding her breath turns Velvet Gang member, Mariah (Taylour Paige) light-skinned, making her less suspicious to store security guards. There’s also a crooked, ritzy high-rise whose floors are so slanted that it’s hard to stand up in its luxury apartments. And lest I forget, there’s a teleporter that works like one of those portable holes in the old Road Runner cartoons. How that fits into a story about workers’ rights, I’ll leave you to discover.

Two of the targets in “I Love Boosters” are fashion designers and the posh places that sell their mediocre products at exorbitant prices. Corvette, Mariah, and Sade (Naomi Ackie) hit up stores that sell designs by fashion icon Christie Smith (Demi Moore). Smith’s couture is so specialized that each store only sells one-color items. If you want a green version of a dress, you have to go to the green store. A haughty manager played by Will Poulter oversees the yellow store where Corvette plans to strike next.

The monochromatic affliction of Smith’s outlets allows production designer Christopher Glass, costume designer Shirley Kurata, and cinematographer Natasha Braier to run wild with brightly colored vistas that would shame Pedro Almodóvar. Braier’s collaboration with a visual stylist like Riley will excite fans of “The Neon Demon,” the bizarre Nicolas Winding Refn film she shot back in 2016. “I Love Boosters” does for yellows and blues what that film did for reds.

Riley juxtaposes the easy life of rich do-nothing designers like Smith with the Chinese factories that make her clothing, establishing early on that it’s on the side of these abused factory workers. The reparations these angry factory workers seek will be granted in an extremely creative fashion.

Meanwhile — and don’t ask me how — Corvette crosses paths with Christie Smith in the latter’s apartment in that aforementioned slanted building. Corvette executes some hilarious physical comedy while Smith commands the space with minimal balance issues. Smith notices the aquamarine dress Corvette is wearing. When Corvette reveals that she made it, Smith not only chastises her for misidentifying the color, she also makes plans to steal the design. This theft, and the rumor of a million dollar dress being hidden somewhere in a Smith fashion store, leads the Velvet Gang to plan their biggest heist of Smith fashions yet.

Unfortunately, somebody beats them to it. Another booster, Jianhu (Poppy Liu) is robbing stores in such quick fashion that there must be some supernatural element to her craft. She and the Velvet Gang form an alliance with much deeper purpose than you might expect. They will be assisted by Violeta (Eiza González from “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice”), forming a multicultural agent of righteous robbery.

If you read the overstuffed cast list, you’ll notice Don Cheadle and “Sorry to Bother You” lead actor, LaKeith Stanfield. Their roles are so out there that I am still picking up my jaw. Under heavy prosthetics, Cheadle is Dr. Jack, a motivational speaker spoof. And Stanfield is a love interest for Corvette whose Teddy Pendergrass stare and Barry White baritone is so sexy it makes the entire screen literally go woozy whenever he’s on it.

Stanfield’s character is the star of a scene depicting something I have never seen in a movie before, nor can I describe it in a family newspaper. You’ll know it when you see it, and you’ll never be able to unsee it, either.

I have to give Boots Riley credit for not only creating a movie as absolutely bananas as “I Love Boosters,” but for also anchoring it with an angry demand to respect the working class. His entire cast is game to play along, especially Palmer and Moore, who are both delightful. I’m not sure if the movie works overall, and there are a lot of loose ends that may frustrate some viewers. But I was hooked and couldn’t stop watching Riley’s raunchy, outrageous vision unfold.

★★★

I LOVE BOOSTERS

Written and directed by Boots Riley. Starring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Demi Moore, Poppy Liu, Don Cheadle, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield. At Coolidge Corner, AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, AMC Causeway, suburbs. 105 minutes. R (nudity, sex, and profanity all get boosted)

Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.