Caveat for this review: I viewed this as part of the opening night celebrations for the Seattle International Film Festival 2026 which was screened in a theater not designed for films, and this left the acoustics lacking and dialogue difficult to comprehend. I will revisit the film when it has it’s official release.

Coming off of his 2018 masterpiece Sorry to Bother You, which has grown to be a film I consider one of the most important of the 21st century, it’s fair to say that my expectations for I Love Boosters were through the roof. Riley is an extremely blatantly socialist filmmaker who in both of his films has focused intensely on how the ruling class exploit the working class, and the importance of taking collective action against ruling class to enact change. This far left ideology exists in not the films subtext, but the text proper. I Love Boosters even ups the explicitness by having one of it’s characters speak the phrase “dialectical materialism”.

Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, and Taylour Paige star as boosters, or people who steal designer clothing to resell for a living. They have a special vendetta against street clothing designer, and culture appropriator, Christine Smith (played marvelously by Demi Moore) as they witness her stealing designs and exploiting her retail workers. The “Velvet Gang” meet up with an exploited worker from one of Christine’s Chinese sweatshops portrayed by Poppy Liu and along with a stolen piece of technology seek revenge on the acclaimed designer.

Riley once again creates an especially surreal world to tell his socialist allegory, and fills it with beautiful costumes, designed by Shirley Kurata, and stop motion imagery to help the communist theory palatable and even enjoyable to the average viewer including a supporting part from LaKeith Stanfield who is a perfect match for Rile even though the director continues to not allow him to exist as a normal human throughout both films.

If Sorry to Bother You was so far ahead of it’s time in 2018 that it still feels like the cutting edge of political satire today, I believe I Love Boosters will feel similar in 2034.