Boots Riley’s “I Love Boosters,” premiering at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival, launches in theaters May 22 via Neon and takes aim at late-capitalist fashion, shoplifting schemes, and a teleportation device—served as a dizzying Bay Area acid trip with Keke Pa
On a tilted street in the Bay Area. gravity doesn’t so much bend as misbehave—and by the time Boots Riley’s “I Love Boosters” gets going. it feels less like a movie you watch and more like one you’re carried along in. The chaos is immediate. the world-building is insistently strange. and the political punch comes threaded through a high-concept sci-fi engine that’s both under- and overexplained.
Neon will release the film in theaters beginning Friday. May 22. and it already arrives with an identity: it’s framed as a socialist stoner comedy set in the wake of a Trump-era world. Riley’s earlier work—“Sorry to Bother You” and the Amazon series “I’m a Virgo”—looms in the background. and the film’s gravity-defying. axis-spinning logic keeps insisting on its own rules even when those rules run headlong into outright absurdity.
The story follows Corvette (Keke Palmer). Sade (Naomi Ackie). and Mariah (Taylour Paige). three rookie Bay Area criminals with comedic timing tuned perfectly to Riley’s odd rhythms and absurdist world-building. They live across Richmond. Hayward. Oakland. San Francisco. and beyond. where a high-rise built at a tilt of 45 degrees is treated like a local fact of life. Another local fact: LaKeith Stanfield appears as an elusive local lothario who uses legend-has-it oral sex skills to literally suck the souls out of women.
Their scheme is built around what a “booster” is: someone who steals luxury goods and resells them on the streets at a lower price point—presented like community service, though it still lands them in trouble when they try to climb higher than they’re equipped to.
Corvette and Mariah are squatting in a shuttered chicken shop. where Corvette sews dreams of being a designer. admiring Christie Smith (Demi Moore). who has spun her haute-couture empire into fast-fashion brick-and-mortars throughout the Bay Area. The film makes Christie’s stores feel like a system. not a style: all the clothes are printed in the same color. and if you want a different shade. “deal with it.” In one of the film’s funniest stretches. Corvette treats a coffee cart like a dumbwaiter—but can’t get out of the room because of the angle of the space.
Corvette. Sade. and Mariah’s plan hinges on sending a helpless white woman into a luxury department store to cause a distraction (or a mess). giving them a way to swipe enough wears and shoes to resell at consignment levels. The film opens with Corvette acting as a honey pot for the criminal operation. luring men off the dance floor and into her pop-up shop of illegal goods. None of the women is a criminal mastermind. and that gap is part of the momentum: when Corvette decides to infiltrate Christie’s shops—and tries to work toward Christie’s rumored $100. 000 suits—she and the crew find themselves deep in over their heads.
Moore drives the film’s sharpest satire. She plays Christie Smith with caustic comedy. riffing off a schematically sketched cutthroat fashion maven whose aviator-glasses-clad look is described as Jenna Lyons adjacent. Will Poulter. styled in head-to-toe green with a swirling shock of hair. takes on the role of Christie Smith general store manager. and makes his presence feel like a whole side show.
Riley’s sci-fi concept keeps the film from staying inside any single lane. A teleportation device is central to the story—“somehow both under- and overexplained”—and the narrative’s energy keeps careening outward. carried by a dizzying. entertaining acid-trip momentum that plays “all the way to the back of the room.” The film also leans into gross-out sexual body horror. and the author’s attention repeatedly drops onto outré side characters and zig-zagging subplots—an approach Riley has used before.
The political thread is where the film most aggressively refuses to let the audience coast. The story spirals into a galaxy-brained tangle of out-there ideas rooted in Riley’s publicly communist worldview. The conspiracy becomes so insane that it’s described as “about one molecule away from adrenochrome. ” and it includes Don Cheadle in the craziest fat suit and prosthetics as the head of a democracy think tank. Cheadle’s character sells pyramid-scheme ideas about invading the rich. proposing that treating people like Peter Thiel. Oprah. and Bill Gates with kindness could make anything happen.
There’s a clear ambition to the way those pieces land. Still. this aspect of the movie is described as poorly executed and not making a lot of sense once the film has pummelled the audience with political protest. Stop-motion animation does help as Cheadle and his coterie are revealed as their true selves.
The film’s stakes widen beyond the Bay Area. Far from the setting it spends so much time cataloging. “I Love Boosters” brings the story to China. where the sweatshop producing Christie Smith’s ready-to-wear clothes is in turmoil and protest. Workers want to rise up. and factory heads running Christie Smith’s sweatshops get their hands on the teleportation device. which is framed as a way to circumvent shipping costs to the United States—tariffs. the review points out—while acknowledging that some political beats sound familiar.
Jianhu (Poppy Liu). identified as a standout in TV’s “Hacks” and “Dead Ringers” but here underserved. is the factory worker who’s pissed off and fed up. When Jianhu brings the teleportation device to the attention of the Velvet Gang—Corvette. Sade. and Mariah’s crew—the results are described as more confusing than insightful. and hampered by what is assumed to be a budget lower than the ambitions called for.
The film also keeps smacking Corvette with blunt metaphors: a ball of unpaid parking tickets and lien notices that keeps hurtling at her. Palmer, however, stands out in the middle of all the mayhem. The review calls her fantastic and points to her comic skill—while also tying her to pathos. A line from her character sticks with the reviewer: “I’m even lonely when I’m with people.”.
That performance is one thing, but the film’s volume is another. The score comes relentlessly, with Tune-Yards—Merrill Garbus’ Oakland-based music project—soundtracking “Sorry to Bother You” as well. Here, it doesn’t give the audience “one second to breathe,” even as the political message tries to land.
A late-breaking monologue about Marxist philosophy and how it ties into the teleportation machine doesn’t make the film more accessible, the review says. Still, Boots Riley is credited with deserving applause for his brazen vision.
Natasha Braier’s cinematography is praised for making the California Bay Area feel like a place that deserves more on-location shoots. specifically for Riley’s sci-fi twists on it. Even though Riley “loses grip on the material overall. ” the review concludes that. as political missives go. there are worse entertainments.
The film premiered at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival, and Neon will release it in theaters beginning Friday, May 22. Grade: B.
Want a final note that matches the film’s tone? The reviewer doesn’t claim certainty about whether audiences will love “boosters”—but does end with the simplest truth: “we certainly like them.”
Boots Riley I Love Boosters Neon release Keke Palmer Naomi Ackie Taylour Paige Demi Moore Don Cheadle SXSW 2026 film review socialist stoner comedy teleportation device Bay Area