Fans of writer-director Boots Riley know what they’re in for with his sophomore feature. A vocal Communist whose first film, the incredible Sorry to Bother You, used absurdism to heighten its satire, Riley proudly owns his wild imagination and a hatred of capitalism that’s equally venomous and admirable. I Love Boosters benefits from that same unapologetic chutzpah, creating a heist film as humorous as it is cutting, even as it threatens to become overload.

Visually, the mise-en-scene leaps out like an explosion at the arts and crafts store. Bright colours pop off the screen with effervescent fervour, giving this idiosyncratic world an engrossing splendour that’s part fever dream, part Looney Tunes sketch. Practical effects and trickery, including stop motion and using models for chase sequences, add to the surrealism of what we’re watching. It’s balls-to-the-wall craftsmanship that fittingly underscores the ways in which creativity is commodified to build empires at the expense of undervalued masses. One doesn’t expect anything less from Riley.

Our protagonist, Corvette (Keke Palmer), wanted to be a creative once, specifically a fashion designer. To make ends meet, she and her friends – known collectively as the Velvet Gang – shoplift clothes from the Metro Designers chain, selling them again at a discounted price. The chain is owned by the pretentious Christie Smith (Demi Moore), whom Corvette admires despite abhorring her price hiking. The strange building Christie resides in, which leans at a 45-degree angle, is but a taste of the madness this film dabbles in, both aesthetically and politically.

At its core, I Love Boosters is a workers’ rights picture. Riley laments the way working classes are taken advantage of so wealthy elites can sell their own, often self-aggrandising or even plagiarised, ideas of creativity or philanthropy. Those same vivacious colours that give the film its visual glee are morphed to make its antagonists gooey and performative – Will Poulter gleefully plays a sycophantic store manager, looking like he stepped out of a Dr Seuss book. From the seamstresses who create clothes to the counter girls who sell them, Riley stands in solidarity with these workers, the picture’s inherent strangeness mocking capitalist hierarchies and philosophies, but never at the expense of those struggling at the bottom.

These themes come to the fore when Corvette and her crew take jobs at a Metro Designer store. They want to pillage everything from the store, but are beaten to the punch by Jianhu (Poppy Liu). She’s a Chinese factory worker using an experimental Metro Designer device to sabotage Christie’s empire, as her factory’s conditions have caused health problems for Jianhu’s family and coworkers. Realising that the device is part teleporter and part molecule re-assembler, the women all team up to disrupt Christie’s profits and exploitation.

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Riley’s affinity for oddness reaches its peak with the introduction of this device. It opens the door – or portal – for outrageous set pieces in which oppressed masses are empowered to fight back using their enemy’s own tools, and the performative rich are shown to be vapid leeches who flail when the system is challenged. Creativity is used to fight back against those who would commodify the medium to uphold cynical materialism; an inventive technique, even if the film starts to become too much at times. Among its abnormalities are propagandistic media figures who wear literal skin suits, and LaKeith Stanfield as a mysterious recurring figure who may or may not suck out souls via oral sex. It’s certainly on brand for Riley, but the timely political sentiments of his story are somewhat diluted by the constant, unfiltered insanity.

It’s all good fun, if maximalist to a fault, but the lack of emotional undercurrent takes much of the sting out of the satire. In his previous effort, the protagonist underwent a disillusionment arc that grounded the absurdity in palpable humanism. Its characterisation and understanding of monetary temptation gave its anti-capitalist commentary heart, as well as substance. Corvette’s character journey, by comparison, is rather flat, the Velvet Gang feeling like a collective stand-in rather than individual personalities. The ensemble cast giddily plays along with the preposterousness, and the flat arcs aid the class solidarity sentiments. But one does wish there were in-narrative personal stakes on the table, as well as the overt political ones.

None of this robs the film of its charm or singular rambunctious style. Bombastic craft and direction, with a ruthlessly scathing view on capitalism, make this a funny and entertaining, if overstuffed, grenade of imagination. But it’s a rare case where some artistic restraint may have enhanced the causes it rightfully champions. Where Sorry to Bother You loudly stuck its middle finger up at the corporate dream and its moral erosion, I Love Boosters feels more like a sermon to the choir, albeit a vividly well-made one.

★★★

In UK cinemas 30th October 2026 / Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Page, Poppy Liu, Eiza Gonzalez, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, Demi Moore / Dir. Boots Riley / Universal Pictures / 15