(18, 114 mins, in cinemas from today)
Film-maker Boots Riley is a communist. You don’t have to share his views to enjoy his riotously enjoyable second feature, but seeing I Love Boosters will force you to concede a second, larger point: popcorn movies and politics aren’t mutually exclusive – or even ideally separated. Indeed, it’s the films presenting themselves as “just entertainment” which should be considered most suspect. Those are the ones concealing the most insidious politics of all.
Corvette (Keke Palmer) is a booster, a member of the “Velvet Gang” along with best friends Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), living in a rainbow-hued, surreally heightened version of Oakland, California, the Black-radicalism-steeped city where the director himself was raised. Before he made movies, Riley was a community organiser and rapper with the Coup. His fiercely inventive 2018 debut feature, Sorry to Bother You, has been credited with predicting the rise of technofascism.
And what is a “booster"? A booster is one who boosts – that is, shoplifts – then sells on the goods at a fraction of retail price, thus (in this case) making high fashion accessible on low incomes. As summarised by the Velvet Gang’s “three Fs”, it’s Fashion Forward (F)Philanthropy.
Demi Moore as Christie Smith in I Love Boosters. Photo: Universal
Demi Moore continues her post-Substance run of career-bests as the fashion designer Christie Smith, a madcap, mercurial genius
And if this brief description already has you incensed at a movie’s irresponsible glamorisation of criminal theft from hard-working multinational conglomerates, well buckle up! Because Keke Palmer is charisma personified, and she’ll have you quoting Gramsci to your picket-line comrades before the credits roll.
Read her lips – yes, to better understand her Marxist insights, but also to appreciate her lipstick. Every scene a new shade; every shade a daring triumph – from royal blue to fuchsia, from bronze to lilac. It’s just one example of the creative abundance of Boosters – in the costumes of Shirley Kurata, the claymation of Ri Crawford and David Lauer, and the wacky practical effects of production designer Christopher Glass, working with cinematographer Natasha Braier. They had to invent a new kind of anamorphic lens just to squeeze it all in!
Corvette herself is a boundless generator of ideas, some of which have been stolen by her idol/nemesis, the fashion designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore, continuing her post-Substance run of career-bests). Though, in fairness, the Velvet Gang had already begun targeting Smith’s Metro Designers – a brand with stores in the US and sweatshops in China – before her theft came to light. Christie is the Wizard of Oz to Corvette’s Dorothy. Or the Willy Wonka to her Charlie: a madcap, mercurial genius who presides over an outwardly dazzling, inwardly corrupt world – in this case, the global fashion industry.
Keke Palmer as Corvette in I Love Boosters. Photo: Universal
Keke Palmer is charisma personified, and she’ll have you quoting Gramsci to your picket-line comrades before the credits roll
Now the Velvet Gang are undercover, working retail at one of Metro Designers’ absurdly hip stores, planning their most audacious heist yet, while trying to avoid getting embroiled in a labour dispute involving both their US colleagues and teleporter-wielding Chinese factory worker Jianhu (Poppy Liu). But as Boosters’ many wild and witty visual gags make clear, there is no opting out of the anti-capitalist struggle.
Thankfully, union organiser Violeta (Eiza González) – a beguiling mix of style icon Mick Lynch and rabble-rouser Vivienne Westwood – is on hand to raise class consciousness. With a puff on her vape and an arch of her bleached brows, she explains that Jianhu’s teleporter is, in fact, a “situational accelerator”, powered by “the principle of dialectic materialism”. Hey, it makes about as much sense as the usual sci-fi film flim-flam, and results in just as many fun action sequences, all urged along by Tune-Yards’ bouncy, boing-y theme tune, Hi Ho.
Riley has made a film that not only looks good, but sounds good and feels good too. (And I bet if we could pop open the celluloid canister and have a little sniff, it would also smell amazing.) In particular, that freewheelin’ boostin’ feeling that comes from seeing our contemporary malaise – a somewhat abstracted, online-exacerbated sense of disconnection – grounded in emotional reality by Palmer’s performance as Corvette.
Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie and Taylour Paige in I Love Boosters. Photo: Universal
She finds some solace in her female friendships (the core trio’s thrilling chemistry earns comparison to cult 90s heist film Set It Off). Sex might also provide a temporary distraction, in the form of LaKeith Stanfield’s purple-shirted, Jheri-curled mystery man. (Everyone, including the camera, agrees he’s so hot he’ll make your vision blur.) Ultimately though, the only cure for disconnection is collective action.
At least, that’s one of the ideas in here. This is a film more boldly stuffed than a booster’s pockets. Second, third and fourth viewings may be necessary to fully unpack it all.
Ellen E Jones is the Nerve’s film critic. A writer and broadcaster, her book Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World (Faber) won the Kraszna-Krausz Prize. She co-hosts the BBC’s flagship film and TV programme, Screenshot, on BBC Radio 4, and won the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Presenter of The Year 2025