Possibly the messiest great movie of 2026, I Love Boosters stars Keke Palmer as the leader of the “Velvet Gang,” a crew of haute couture bandits who resell their spoils via underground markets. Given the exorbitant prices of the clothes, the underpaid and overworked sales staff at the boutiques, the oppressive working conditions in the factories where the items are made, and the extreme wealth of the CEOs who run the companies, this is an enterprise that the boosters see as something of a Robin Hood endeavor. (Can you blame them?) If anyone expected writer-director Boots Riley to button up for his follow-up to 2018’s Sorry to Bother You—a chaotic, comic riff on Black aspiration amidst (slightly) absurdist capitalism—you’ll likely be disappointed by the freewheeling choices he makes here. The story is looser, the satire sporadic, and the ending unconvincingly optimistic, yet I Love Boosters has a voice, energy, and inventiveness you won’t find anywhere else onscreen—as when Palmer’s Corvette, who is an aspiring designer herself, has a technicolor dream in which she’s drowning in a cavalcade of stolen outfits. In addition to color-popping costume and production design, the movie also functions as a canvas for a bevy of fantastic performances. Palmer—who is pretty much dynamite any time on screen—gets giddy comic support from Taylour Paige (Zola), Naomi Ackie (Mickey 17), Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver), Poppy Liu, and Demi Moore, the latter of whom shows vicious comic chops as a vindictive fashion mogul. And let’s not forget LaKeith Stanfield. Riley may be the best handler of Stanfield’s particular vibe (sorrowful serenity, but funny), so it’s nice to see that he made room for his Sorry to Bother You lead here, in a small part as a mysterious fashion hustler who may or may not be a demon.
(6/26/2026)
