Boots Riley's 'I Love Boosters' Turns $100,000 Suits Into a Socialist-Surrealist Heist
Updated
Updated · The New Yorker · May 22
Boots Riley's 'I Love Boosters' Turns $100,000 Suits Into a Socialist-Surrealist Heist
8 articles · Updated · The New Yorker · May 22
A new review casts “I Love Boosters” as an exuberant Bay Area caper about three Black shoplifters targeting a fashion chain whose owner plans to launch $100,000 suits.
Corvette—the gang’s designer leader—drives the story after discovering the chain has lifted her Instagram design, tying the film’s revenge plot to fashion appropriation, wage theft and sweatshop labor.
Boots Riley pushes the movie beyond heist comedy with a teleporter stolen from a Chinese factory, plus media satire, workplace lampooning and bursts of political science fiction.
The critic says that sprawl is also the film’s weakness: its vivid colors, gags and ideas often outpace a clear critique, leaving Corvette’s artistic ambition and the movie’s redistribution politics underexplored.
As the luxury market falters, can a high-fashion heist truly challenge the system or is it just another fantasy?
When a sci-fi teleporter becomes a heist tool, does it offer a real solution to systemic injustice?