Name: I Love Boosters
Director: Boots Riley
Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction, Crime
Released: 2026-05-22T00:00:00+00:00
Duration: 113 min
Cast: Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González

The still that travels with I Love Boosters is a crowd of faces packed so tightly they read as one arrangement: hair piled high in green, in blue and pink, in orange, in magenta, small flowers pinned around the eyes, a bank of yellow, blue and pink blooms where the shoulders should be, a sweep of red ruffles on one side and, at the far edge, a blonde woman in black glasses. Everything is lit against black. It is the most honest summary of Boots Riley’s pitch, a comedy about shoplifters who rob a luxury fashion label and sell the clothes back cheap, dressed up like the runway it wants to raid.

That image now has to sell the film a second time. In America, the director himself called the theatrical run a disappointment, even as reviewers lined up behind it. Abroad, the picture is starting over with a headline gala at the BFI London Film Festival, a place in competition at the Rome Film Festival, commercial screenings at the São Paulo Mostra, where Riley also sits on a jury, and a British and Irish release through Focus Features at the end of the month. The open question is whether critical goodwill can do overseas what it could not do at home.

The casting is built like a group portrait rather than a star vehicle. Keke Palmer plays Corvette, an aspiring designer who steals from the label she admires, with Naomi Ackie as Sade and Taylour Paige as Mariah completing the trio known as the Velvet Gang. Demi Moore is Christie Smith, the designer whose chain they strip. Poppy Liu plays Jianhu, a worker from one of the label’s factories in China, and Eiza González is Violeta, a former co-worker who wants the gang to fight for better conditions instead of simply cashing in. The Boston Globe’s Odie Henderson singled out Palmer and Moore as especially delightful.

Riley came to cinema from music. He fronts the hip-hop group The Coup, and this film grows out of one of the band’s own songs, “I Love Boosters!”. His feature debut, Sorry to Bother You (2018), followed a telemarketer played by LaKeith Stanfield who succeeds by putting on a “white voice”, and turned a modest budget into a genuine hit. He then created and directed the absurdist series I’m a Virgo (2023). The new film keeps the same logic of a workplace comedy that slides into science fiction, and the same arrangement abroad: as with the debut, Focus Features and Universal handle international distribution.

The setup stays close to the ground before it tips over. The Velvet Gang lift clothes from the Metro Designers chain in the San Francisco Bay Area and resell them at a discount to make ends meet, a practice the film’s tagline defines as “community service”. Corvette’s admiration for Christie curdles when one of the label’s new pieces turns out to be identical to one of her own designs. Then Jianhu arrives with teleporters stolen from her factory, sending merchandise back to China as leverage for better pay, and the heist comedy becomes something stranger. Riley has never been interested in keeping his metaphors on a leash.

Critics mostly followed him. The film holds 92% positive reviews from 152 critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 71. Amy Nicholson of the Los Angeles Times called it “a maximalist delight” and “a spangled, stoner-comedy extravaganza with the moxie to give a Monty Python-esque raspberry to realism”. Odie Henderson, in the Boston Globe, gave Riley credit “for not only creating a movie as absolutely bananas as I Love Boosters, but for also anchoring it with an angry demand to respect the working class”.

The reservations are real, and they explain some of the American result. According to its Wikipedia record, the film grossed $9.7 million domestically against a budget of roughly $20 million, while Sorry to Bother You made $18.3 million on $3.2 million. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a B. Maya Phillips of The New York Times found some of the wackiness “more cartoonishly shopworn than his more innovative swerves”, at the cost of “a more coherent and biting political message”. The Guardian’s Radheyan Simonpillai, otherwise amused, wrote that the characters “can feel frustratingly limited”. There is also a timing problem the festival circuit cannot fix: the British opening arrives after the American digital and disc releases, and a maximalist comedy that depends on word of mouth reaches new audiences with much of that word already spent.

Where the film seems surest of itself is in its surfaces. It was shot in Atlanta by the cinematographer Natasha Braier, with a score by Tune-Yards, and The New York Times praised its costume and production design along with Palmer. Neon built part of its campaign around that wardrobe, releasing a promo devoted to the costuming alongside featurettes on what boosting is and how to spot a fake. Riley and Palmer also recorded an original soundtrack EP, led by the single “2-D”. For a film about who gets to wear what, the clothes are not decoration; they are the argument.

A still from the Boots Riley comedy I Love Boosters, 2026 — A still from Boots Riley film *I Love Boosters* (2026)

Beyond those six, the ensemble includes LaKeith Stanfield as a mysterious man with a pinky ring, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, Adam DeVine, Kara Young, Robin Thede, Jason Ritter, Eric André and Jermaine Fowler, with Viggo Mortensen voicing a documentary narrator. Aaron Ryder and Andrew Swett produced through Ryder Picture Company, with financing from Neon and Waypoint Entertainment. The running time is 113 minutes.

I Love Boosters opened the SXSW Film & TV Festival on March 12, 2026, and was released in the United States and Canada by Neon on May 22, followed by digital on June 23 and disc on September 22. Internationally, it plays as a Headline Gala at the BFI London Film Festival (October 7 to 18) and competes in the Progressive Cinema section of the Rome Film Festival this month. Focus Features opens it in cinemas in the United Kingdom and Ireland on October 30. Universal releases it in Brazil on November 19, and listings point to November 5 in Germany. A film that already reached American shelves on disc gets something rare out of that calendar: a second opening night.