Rapper Boots Riley is never Sorry To Bother You
Sorry to Bother You is about a lot of things. It’s the type of film that can be endlessly dissected over the course of many viewings. Each scene, each detail, each character choice, design, and detail add up to something profound, but elusive.
The film isn’t challenging in its message, necessarily, but in its construction. The ideas on display of racial identity, of American consciousness, of corporate recklessness and greed are nothing new.
It strange how our art can hammer out the same ideas across generations, how people can agree about things across socioeconomic lines, yet power continues to be concentrated in the same places. It’s always the same struggle, the same kings, the same serfs. Just the vocabulary changes.
Sorry to Bother You is entertaining as can be, with a surreal alternate reality that is too close to our reality for comfort. It’s a film that has no chance for success among the summer fare—it’s too strange for wide appeal—but is an absolute gem for someone other than the casual movie goer.
It’s original, it’s fresh, it’s topical, it’s funny, and there are no superheroes or cartoon franchises in sight. Sorry to Bother You won’t be a giant financial success, but it’ll be far more lasting than the films that are.Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) is down on his luck. He’s unemployed, lives in his uncle Sergio’s (Terry Crews) garage with girlfriend where he’s four months behind on his rent, and drives a beat up loaner car that looks ready to fall apart at any moment.
Not that anyone else is doing much better. His uncle is behind on his mortgage payments and about to lose his house. His artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson) is a sign twirler.
The neighborhood is littered with advertisements for employment with a corporation called WorryFree, where employees sign lifetime contracts for a chance to have three meals a day and a place to sleep at night. Cassius isn’t interested in that life, though. He’s got an interview with RegalView, a telemarketing company.
After a rocky start, he soon learns that RegalView will hire anyone that can read a script. Cassius’ job is to call as many people he can, all day long for commission.
If he does well enough, he can become a power caller and move upstairs to where the real money is. But as with most movies, he soon learns not everything is as it seems. Success in this world means standing on the neck of other people.
Sorry to Bother You is one hell of a debut film for rapper and producer Boots Riley. Riley is better known as the lead vocalist for The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. He doesn’t have any other director credits beyond a short film for The Coup, and Sorry to Bother You is his only writing credit. For him to have created a film like this one right out of the gate is astounding.
The film can, at times, be slightly unfocused. Riley has a lot of narrative threads stretched throughout the movie and anyone of them might have lead somewhere interesting. However, very few will expect the film to end up where it does.
The struggle with focus is lessened by the performances of the actors. LaKeith Stanfield, better known from the excellent FX series Atlanta, has impeccable comic timing while Tessa Thompson always delivers.
But the film shines in dozens of ways and at least glimmers in most others. There isn’t much to criticize here—it’s a solid film with a lot to say.
What the film has to say on the whole, as I mentioned, is harder to nail down. Riley’s version of America is fully realized, but maybe not quite as surreal as he thinks.
It’s not hard to imagine Amazon offering lifetime contracts to workers and having them live on site. It’s not hard to imagine Congress being completely okay with it.
What the film offers is a lot of complex, difficult problems without easy answers. In that way, it’s the most realistic film of the year. As one character says, “If you show a person a problem and they have no idea how to control it, they just learn to ignore it.”
I can’t think of anything that represents today’s world better.