Synopsis: A crew of professional shoplifters take aim at a cutthroat fashion maven. It’s like community service.
Stars: Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, Demi Moore
Director: Boots Riley
Rated: R
Running Length: 105 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: I Love Boosters is Boots Riley unchained but in full command, delivering a riotous Bay Area heist movie powered by a career-best Keke Palmer, a frostbitten Demi Moore, and costumes that could swipe an Oscar.
I Love Boosters Review: Boots Riley Brings the Boom
My favorite kind of movie is one that makes you sit up in your seat and go, “wait, are we allowed to do this?” Boots Riley has built his whole filmmaking life around that question, and with I Love Boosters he’s no longer asking permission. His 2018 debut Sorry to Bother You announced him as a singular voice but ran out of road in the third act. His Amazon series I’m a Virgo showed what he could do with more room. I Love Boosters is what happens when the ambition and the execution finally shake hands and decide to dance.
A Heist Movie, Sort Of
Corvette (Keke Palmer, Nope) runs the Velvet Gang, a crew of professional shoplifters working the high-fashion retail circuit in a Bay Area that feels familiar but bent about 15 degrees off true. With Sade (Naomi Ackie, The Thursday Murder Club) handling the practical side and Mariah (Taylour Paige, IT: Welcome to Derry) bringing the chaos, they boost couture from a chain of monochrome boutiques called Metro Designers and resell it to their neighborhood at a third of retail. They call it philanthropy.
The chain belongs to Christie Smith (Demi Moore, The Substance), a designer-mogul with an Andy Warhol bob and the soul of a wood chipper. Then a Chinese factory worker named Jianhu (Poppy Liu, His & Hers) shows up with a device that does some things I’m not going to spoil because half the joy of this movie is watching the floor tilt under you.
A Cast Operating at Full Throttle
Palmer is pure neon here. I’ve been watching her career carefully and this is the most in-control I’ve seen her on screen. She’s funny, she’s furious, she’s the voice of reason, she’s the spark that starts the fire, and she also contributes vocals to several original songs on the soundtrack because of course she does. Stick around for the credits.
Moore proves The Substance was no fluke. As Christie, she’s playing cold the way a knife plays cold, and Riley shoots her with a clear understanding of what she can do with a stillness. Ackie and Paige are perfect counterweights to Palmer. Liu walks in with the trickiest assignment in the film and pulls it off. Eiza González (I Care a Lot) is borderline unrecognizable as a Metro Designers employee and the funniest she’s ever been on screen, sparring with Will Poulter (Death of a Unicorn) as a Metro Designers manager who is the kind of mean that loops back around to delicious.
LaKeith Stanfield (Uncut Gems) plays a mysterious pinky-ring guy whose whole deal is one of Riley’s biggest swings. The entire concept could have flopped in less assured hands. Stanfield makes it land. And see how long it takes you to find Don Cheadle (Iron Man 3). Riley loves a hidden goodie. And Cheadle is one of many.
A Genuine Feast for the Senses
Cinematographer Natasha Braier (The Neon Demon) treats the surreal stuff like it has weight, which is the whole trick. Production designer Christopher Glass builds Christie’s office at a 45-degree tilt that’s both a visual joke and a logical threat. Costume designer Shirley Kurata (Opus) has already booked her flight to next year’s Oscar conversation. Her work here is the best costuming in any 2026 movie I’ve seen so far, with each Metro Designers store committed to a single screaming color and every Velvet Gang look telling a small story about who’s wearing it.
Alina Kanin‘s score chirps and laughs and tumbles like it’s playing at a crazed carnival. Editors Terel Gibson and Matthew Hannam keep this thing on the rails when it could easily have flown into the trees. And shout-out to Miles Votek’s puppet work, which I will say no more about.
Why It Lands When Sorry to Bother You Wandered
The thing that holds I Love Boosters together where Sorry to Bother You finally lost its grip is structure. Riley builds his characters and his world so carefully in the first half that when he asks you to leap with him in the second half, you’re already strapped in. He’s saying real things about labor, exploitation, and who actually does the stealing in a global economy, but he’s saying them in a wrapper so candy-bright and irresistibly weird that you don’t notice you’ve been recruited until you’re already nodding along.
I watched it at home and immediately started planning a theatrical rewatch. Riley has made a movie that earns the big screen. Bring snacks. Bring friends. Bring whoever needs a reminder that mainstream cinema can still be this fearless.
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