There's a moment in Boots Riley's new film I Love Boosters where the absurdity of the setup hits you like a wave: a gang of young women systematically stealing from high-end retailers and selling the goods back to their community at lower prices. It's Robin Hood in designer threads, a heist comedy that doubles as a full-throated indictment of how capitalism weaponizes aspiration.
The film follows the Velvet Gang, a crew played by Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, and Eiza González as they target Metro Designers, a luxury chain in Oakland run by a deliciously villainous Demi Moore. Palmer's Corvette leads the operation, driven equally by her genuine love of fashion design and the grim necessity of survival. Ackie's Sade and Paige's Mariah ride alongside her. Liu and González bring their own reasons: Liu's family was exploited in the factory conditions that supply the stores, while González's character Violeta leads an attempt to unionize before joining the boosting crew.
What makes I Love Boosters work as more than just a clever premise is that it refuses easy answers. The film exists in the space between contradictions. Fashion does change how people perceive you. A well-chosen outfit can genuinely shift your standing in the world. That's both true and deeply unfair. Palmer articulated this perfectly during conversations about the film, noting that a young person from Compton could become Tyler The Creator through style and presentation, that people treat you differently based on what you wear. "It kind of works and it's also a problem," she said.
For Ackie, the fashion industry represents capitalism's broader sins in miniature. "The thing about fashion is that it's a microcosm of something bigger," she explained. She pointed to the full chain of exploitation: the human cost of manufacturing, the carbon footprint of production, the way consumers are sold an identity tied directly to brand names and price tags. We're told that buying the right clothes will transform us into different, better versions of ourselves. Some of that promise is real. Most of it is engineered.
What's striking about the cast is how grounded they kept their approach despite the film's maximalist, surrealist aesthetic. When asked for advice to current retail workers dealing with tyrannical managers and poverty wages, they offered practical wisdom. Paige suggested arch support for long shifts. Ackie said to hydrate. Liu acknowledged the invisible labor of stockroom workers. González nodded in solidarity. Palmer's closing advice cut straight to the bone: "Get your next job lined up."
The film's visual world is deliberately bright and fantastical, a sharp contrast to the grim reality it depicts. Director Riley, cinematographer Natasha Braier, and costume designer Shirley Kurata created something that feels more like a surrealist sketch than social realism. Some critics have dismissed this approach, with The Daily Beast comparing it unfavorably to a child's finger painting of Che Guevara. But that's precisely where the film's power lies. Movements for radical change aren't tidy or perfectly reasoned. They're messy, they ooze with passion, they include unhinged subplots. Riley understands that the push for systemic change arrives in many forms, not all of them polished.
The philosophical core centers on what theft means under capitalism. Riley has stated plainly that theft isn't outside the system, it's foundational to it. The bourgeoisie built their wealth by stealing land, minerals, and labor. The difference is that kind of theft is called legal. When the Velvet Gang take back luxury goods, they're operating in a system that has always been defined by appropriation. The gap between the two is just a question of which side of power you're on.
Riley's vision positions fashion as a language of resistance, particularly for communities capitalism typically renders invisible except as consumers. A platform boot or an oversized faux fur coat carries symbolic weight when worn by women the system tried to erase. In I Love Boosters, the enemy isn't just Demi Moore's CEO character, it's the entire structure that rations dignity through price tags and convinces desperate people that their worth depends on what they can afford.
At the film's Los Angeles premiere, the cast engaged red carpet attendees with a genuinely subversive question: What's the most annoying thing about capitalism? Poppy Liu launched into a three-minute breakdown of systemic harms. Bob The Drag Queen offered dark comedy, noting we're in late-stage capitalism so maybe it will all end soon anyway. The responses generated over 600,000 views online, split between people calling it refreshing to hear substance on a red carpet and critics calling it hypocritical for wealthy people to critique a system they benefit from.
That dichotomy is itself the point. Most of the cast doesn't have the wealth people assume comes with visibility. More fundamentally, dismantling capitalism requires participation from every class level, not just the destitute or the revolutionary pure.
The film also served as a backdrop for action. When LaKeith Stanfield mentioned the movie's promotional gas giveaway during the press tour, Palmer and Stanfield hosted a Shell gas station event where they pumped free tanks for drivers while handing out movie swag. That directly addressed one of capitalism's cruelest mechanisms: the way energy costs create instant divides and force impossible choices.
I Love Boosters understands that in 2026, survival has become aestheticized. Debt has a look. Burnout has a uniform. Class anxiety arrives dressed head-to-toe in designer labels purchased on payment plans. The film's smartest insight isn't just that the wealthy have too much and the poor have too little. It's that the poor are sold the fantasy that having the right things will change their condition, all while being denied the wages to ever afford them.
What Riley captures is that fashion has always been political for marginalized communities. It's been a way to signal joy, status, rebellion, and solidarity simultaneously. His film treats it with that same weight, refusing to reduce clothing to mere consumerism or to dismiss the real human need for beauty and self-expression as shallow.
Author Jessica Williams: "I Love Boosters finally gave voice to the rage of retail workers like my younger self, and it did so by embracing the messy, unfinished nature of actual resistance instead of pretending revolution comes gift-wrapped and photo-ready."
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