Review: Fashion and politics get a radical makeover in the riotous 'I Love Boosters'
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If Charlie Chaplin were alive — and blitzed out of his mustachioed gourd — his favorite filmmaker would be Boots Riley.The two auteurs share a flair for spinning societal critique into maniacal physical comedy.
In “Modern Times,” the Little Tramp slithered through a factory’s giant gears.In Riley’s “I Love Boosters,” a fashion tycoon named Christie Smith (Demi Moore) lives in a luxury skyscraper with floors slanted at an imposing 45-degree angle that only she has the ability to walk.
Her visiting employees stumble, flail and skid.“I Love Boosters” is a maximalist delight with practical sight gags including a menacing Indiana Jones-style boulder of unpaid bills, car chases done with unabashed miniatures, actors who disappear mid-pursuit like human Whack-A-Mole and a horde of stop-motion baddies that would make Ray Harryhausen leap to his feet and applaud.The story pits Moore’s egotistical, tyrannical Christie against a pack of small-time shoplifters, Corvette (Keke Palmer), Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), a.k.a.the Velvet Gang.
Scheming Corvette is Palmer’s newest marvelously louche heroine.Lately, she’s making a feast of roles that all remind me of that old sitcom episode in which Lucille Ball gobbles chocolates on a conveyor belt.
A designer, Corvette once aspired to create her own clothing line but couldn’t get her spike-heeled foot in the door.For now, she peddles stolen outfits to sleazy men and grateful women while squatting in a shuttered fast-food joint where her wall art is a vestigial menu of fried chicken.
Movies The Oakland-based musician and filmmaker smuggles revolutionary ideas into his latest movie, an absurdist candy-colored romp about shoplifting and workers’ rights.Christie calls the Velvet Gang “lazy.” But staying afloat is a full-time hustle, especially when bedazzled Corvette, headstrong Sade and dippy Mari...