SXSW ’26: I Loved “I Love Boosters”
A booster is someone who steals clothes and sells them at a deep discount. When asked what inspired writer/director Boots Riley to make I Love Boosters, his sophomore feature film that was the opening night film of the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Film Festival, he shrugged and said, “well, I’ve bought a lot of stuff from boosters.” Riley is a director known for wild, outlandish visuals, and I Love Boosters is no different, but this time around something has changed, for the better. There’s no sophomore slump from Riley and this film is a high-energy way to begin the festival.
Corvette (Keke Palmer) is a fashion designer forced to be a booster. She loves fashion, the visionary designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore) especially, but fears her clothes are too bold to catch on. Corvette boosts with Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), and each plays a different role in the group. Mariah is the optimist, Sade is the realist, and Corvette is the engine that makes them all go. They’re The Velvet Gang, and Christie wants to run them into the ground after they steal clothes from one of her retail stores. As the gang moves deeper into Christie’s orbit, they meet a cast of weird characters who help them see that there’s a dark underbelly to Christie and the entire fashion industry.
Much like Sorry to Bother You, I Love Boosters is about the way society is fundamentally failing the people who live in it. Unless you’re part of the billionaire class, the system is stacked against you. While Sorry to Bother You came across as a little disjointed when that moment happened (you know it if you’ve seen it), I Love Boosters’ Riley is so honed in that this is a thrill of a flick. He’s still weird, still loud, still so uniquely out of the box, and his vision is even bolder, but there’s a sense that he’s confidently cruising in the director’s chair. His commanding control over the vision and the madness allows him to go off the wall and make it feel purposeful.
Every detail of I Love Boosters feels like it was studied with a microscope. Dissertations could be written about the color theory and the design of the costumes throughout the film. Sure, the Oscars haven’t even happened for last year’s crop of films, but it feels pretty safe to say that Best Costume Design is going home with Shirley Kurata next year. The same goes for Christopher Glass’ production design. They’ve created a marvelous, playful, magical world that pulls the viewer in from the beginning. It starts when the film fades in to a pulsing nightclub, then continues to Christie’s monochromatic stores. I Love Boosters has created a bright, new visual language that’s entrancing. That’s even before mentioning the incredible miniature work and the stop motion elements.
There are many threads this review could pull on to talk about, but to do so would ruin the experience of seeing how Riley continues to one-up himself. An insular story about a girl and her friends suddenly turns global in the blink of an eye. Riley is almost gleefully mushing the plot into Play-doh every few scenes to see what else he can make. How else can he continue to examine friendship, romantic relationships, class solidarity, and the media's ability to be bought and sold by the highest bidder, all with increasing levels of oddity? I Love Boosters is hard to contain, and that makes for a hell of a ride for the viewer. Big, bold, and truly visionary, Riley has given himself, his cast, and his crew a playground on which to make a film so rooted in madness that it effortlessly captures the absurdity of our world.
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