If you told most Hollywood executives you were making a visually kaleidoscopic caper rooted in dialectical materialism, they would escort you out of the building. Boots Riley apparently took that as a challenge.
The writer-director behind the gloriously unhinged Sorry to Bother You is back with I Love Boosters, and based on everything coming out of the film's press rollout - including a candid conversation between Riley and costar Don Cheadle covered by GQ - this thing looks like it could be the comedy event of the year. No pressure.
A self-help guru, a caper, and a Marxist walks into a multiplex
Cheadle plays what GQ describes as a "slippery self-help guru," which is honestly the kind of casting that makes you wonder why it took this long. The man has range. And Riley, for his part, seems completely uninterested in making anything that doesn't smuggle genuinely radical ideas inside a crowd-pleasing wrapper.
That's kind of his whole thing, actually. Sorry to Bother You was a workplace comedy until it very much wasn't. I Love Boosters appears to be pulling the same move - lure you in with the heist energy and the visual fireworks, then hit you with the theory. Dialectical materialism! In your summer blockbuster slot! Incredible.
Why this actually matters
Here's the thing about Boots Riley that makes him genuinely interesting to watch: he's not trying to sneak politics into entertainment as a trojan horse so much as he seems to believe - deeply, practically - that art and activism are the same muscle. The GQ conversation touches on exactly this, with Riley and Cheadle riffing on how radical ideas travel through pop culture and why that journey matters.
In a blockbuster landscape that often treats "message" as a dirty word while simultaneously producing the most anodyne possible content, a filmmaker who is openly, cheerfully ideological is kind of a novelty. Riley isn't being coy about what he's doing. He's telling you the movie is about dialectical materialism. He just also made it look like an absolute feast for the eyes.
The bottom line
Is I Love Boosters going to be the movie that makes Marxist economic theory cool at the multiplex? Probably not. But it might be the most interesting thing playing next to whatever the fourth sequel is. And sometimes that's enough.
Keep an eye on this one. Riley and Cheadle together is already a ridiculous amount of talent in one room, and the ambition here sounds genuinely unhinged - in the best possible way.
