I Love Boosters Review: Stealing Back From a World That Already Robbed You

 

Boots Riley does not make movies for people who want their politics whispered to them. He makes movies that kick the door open, wearing stolen designer clothes, carrying a megaphone, and asking why everybody got so comfortable calling survival a crime.

I Love Boosters, Riley’s new crime comedy, follows a crew of shoplifters who steal high-end fashion and resell it cheaper, until a ruthless fashion mogul steals their designs and gives them a bigger reason to strike back. The film stars Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Don Cheadle, and Demi Moore, with Neon releasing it theatrically in the U.S. on May 22, 2026.

The movie sounds like a joke until you realize Riley is dead serious. That has always been his trick. Sorry to Bother You took corporate America, race, labor, and desperation and turned them into a carnival ride with the brakes cut. I Love Boosters appears to be playing in that same register: absurd, loud, messy, funny, political, and allergic to being normal.

Just how Boots like it. I mean, just how Boots loves it. 

The idea of “boosting” has always lived in that gray area America loves to pretend it does not understand. When rich people steal ideas, labor, land, culture, designs, slang, and style, they call it business. When poor people steal the finished product back, suddenly everybody finds a moral compass. That is where this movie seems to plant its flag. Not in the question of whether stealing is “right,” but in the bigger question: what do you call a system that robs people so cleanly it gets to write the law afterward?

Keke Palmer as Corvette feels like perfect casting because she has the kind of presence that can sell both the comedy and the hurt underneath it. She can be funny without looking like she is begging for the laugh, and she can carry a working-class frustration without turning it into a lecture. Around her, the ensemble gives the film the feeling of a crew movie, not just a star vehicle. That matters because Riley’s politics are never really about the lone genius. They are about collective action. Nobody gets free by themselves.

The fashion angle is what makes the movie hit a little harder. Clothes are never just clothes. They are class, access, taste, aspiration, costume, armor, and sometimes a receipt of who got left outside. A luxury brand can take from the street, mark it up, put it behind glass, and call it “inspired.” But when the same people who created the sauce find a way to get paid off it, now it is theft. That hypocrisy is the movie’s real villain.

From early reviews, I Love Boosters seems to be divisive in the way a Boots Riley project should be. Some critics praise the film’s originality, visual ambition, and anti-capitalist bite, while others call it overstuffed or chaotic. That does not scare me. Some movies are clean because they do not have much to say. Riley’s work is messy because he is trying to stuff the whole broken machine into the frame.

That does not mean the movie is above criticism. A story this packed can lose emotional weight if every character becomes a symbol. Satire can also get so busy proving its point that it forgets to let a scene breathe. But even when Riley misses, he misses swinging at something real. I will always respect that more than a polished movie with nothing on its mind.

I Love Boosters looks like a movie about shoplifting, but it is really about ownership. Who owns style? Who owns labor? Who owns rebellion once rebellion becomes marketable? And who gets punished for taking back a little piece of what the world already took from them?

That is the fun of it. That is also the sting.

Because under all the jokes, fits, scams, surrealism, and chaos, I Love Boosters seems to be asking one very simple question:

If the whole system is built on stealing, why is the booster the only one being chased?