Hi Hi Hey Ho Hi Hi Hey Hi Hey Ho
Every now and then a film comes along and just refuses to be put in a box.
That happens only a few times a year if we’re lucky. Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma did that as did the Indonesian prison horror comedy film by Joko Anwar, Ghost in the Cell. Both films surprised and subverted any expectations.
Boots Riley does just that with his latest film I Love Boosters.
A Booster is someone who steals an item from a store and sells it on at a discounted price, and according to the director Boots Riley, they help hold communities together.
The Boosters are, in a way, modern day Robin Hoods.
Keke Palmer plays Corvette, the leader of the Velvet Gang, who along with Mariah (Taylour Paige) and Sade (Naomi Ackie) routinely steal clothes from Metro Designers Fashion stores, an upmarket chain of shops run by designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore), in order to resell them on the streets of Oakland in the San Francisco Bay area.
Kind of a community service as most of the residents couldn’t afford the clothes in the first place. The film makes smart observations about workers being exploited.
From the sweatshops in China to the streets of Oakland and beyond. Riley’s mission statement is about fairness, equality and workers of the world uniting. It is one I wholeheartedly agree with.
Boots Riley is also a rapper who was part of The Coup and in 2006 he wrote a song called I love Boosters.
“On the track, the rapper-frontman version of Riley broke down, like a playfully streetwise sociologist, the creative ways that poorer neighborhoods operate their own underground economies to get into some good-looking clothes.”
The chorus goes:
“I love them boosters
They love them boosters
You should love them too
Even if they don’t know ya
They’ll get it for ya
Like a whole outfit or shoe.”
If you haven’t heard any of The Coup, do yourself a solid and check them out. 90s Boom Bap Conscious rap. I’m here for it.
The actors are all wonderful and Keke Palmer grounds the film and plays Corvette with grit through the frustrations and challenges as she tries to elevate and move forward.
Taylour Paige is a delight, perfectly cute and awkward and delivers another shade to her wonderful work. English actor, Naomi Ackie gives the perfect amount of enthusiasm, naivete and guts. In the below average Clayface, Ackie was the best thing in it by far.
Poppy Liu plays Jianhu, a worker from a factory in China who gets involved in the Boosters schemes in ways no one will see coming.
In fact, as the film progresses the premise becomes more and more sci-fi and all the better for it. Demi Moore is great as the designer that keeps getting robbed. Will Poulter is very funny as the store manager at one of Christie’s shops, giving camp in a way he’s never done before. LaKeith Stanfield gives brooding a new face with the effect of a new lens effect as the otherworldly being with heart and wanting. Don Cheadle is almost unrecognisable under prosthetics as Dr Jack, a ponzi scheme scammer, who Ackie’s Sade is a big fan of.
Boots Riley said in a podcast with Film Comment host, Devika Girish that he wanted the actors to portray something different from what they’ve done before and pushes his actors and allows them space to discover and play in ways we haven’t seen them do.
Keke Palmer also contributes some of the songs on the soundtrack, which is wonderful and the score is composed by the out there and incredible Tune-Yards (they had previously provided the score for Riley’s last film, Sorry To Bother You).
All together now “Hi Hi Hey Ho Hi Hi Hey Hi Hey Ho“
Also featured in the film is the brilliant track Makeba by Jain which is an old favourite of mine from 2015.
It is so refreshing to go to the cinema and see something that is surprising, unexpected and innovative.
If you want to see a film that is an antidote to the stale, homogenised, beige dross that Hollywood can’t help but churn then out do yourself a favour and go see this.
113 Minutes
