Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Boots Riley, director and writer
Annapurna Pictures
105 minutes
Review by Patrick Corbeil
Sorry to Bother You doesn’t do subtlety. Its comedy is broad and in your face, and the movie wears its inescapable political message proudly on its sleeve – or as enormous, sloganeering earrings in the case of the character Detroit (played by a show stealing Tessa Thompson). It is the lack of subtlety that is its most refreshing and powerful quality.
First time writer and director Boots Riley wants you know there is a right and a wrong here. What’s right is working-class solidarity and grassroots organizing to achieve economic justice. What’s wrong is scabbing and profiting off the backs of workers regarded as necessary but irritating sub humans. Seeing this message presented unflinchingly in any wide release is reason to cheer. That Sorry to Bother You is hilarious, thought-provoking, and dizzyingly weird is icing on the cinematic cake.
The (maybe) near future
There are important elements of Sorry to Bother You’s story that you absolutely must see unspoiled. The basic premise finds us in Oakland in the (maybe) near future that is slightly further down the road of neoliberal social decay. The movie follows Cassius “Cash” Green (Lakeith Stanfield), his fiancé Detroit (Thompson), and best friend Salvador (Jermaine Fowler) as they try to make their way in a brutal and unforgiving economy. Along the way, Riley manages to examine and satirize American class and racial politics, the media, consumer culture, viral internet memes, and even performance art. The movie is filled to the brim with ideas and jokes and it is a joy to watch it all (mostly) fit together.
The movie offers its working-class protagonists the unpalatable choices of low-paying work in places like the RegalView telemarketing call centre that is the film’s primary workplace; grinding poverty, dispossession, and homelessness; or signing up for WorryFree, the Silicon Valley techno-utopian, “sharing” economy version of slavery. (The CEO of WorryFree, Steve Lift – a deliciously smarmy Armie Hammer – is a typical Silicon Valley techno-utopian billionaire out to save the world for profit, and is the object of the film’s most potent satire.)
No shortcut
In any case, the movie’s narrative momentum comes from the tension that arises between Cash and his friends and coworkers. Cash is endowed with an uncanny ability to speak in a white voice (overdubbed by comedian David Cross) and the skill propels him towards promotion as a “power caller” – a job on a higher floor where the employees make real money compared to the pittance available to Cash’s colleagues peddling encyclopedias and home wellness books to sobbing widows, yuppie douchebags, and other assorted caricatures.
His path to promotion puts Cash in conflict with the unionization drive led by his radicalized co-worker Squeeze (Steven Yeun). Cash’s decisions when faced with choosing between standing with his friends or pursuing his own success are the catalyst for the movie’s chaotic, bizarre, and wonderful third act which I will not spoil here. What I can say without fear of ruining your enjoyment is that, long before the narrative has played out, Sorry to Bother You has made clear that there is no shortcut around solidarity and the slow, cooperative work of organizing and collectively fighting for everyone’s well being.
To say any more of the plot would be a disservice. Ultimately, the less you know about the movie, its tricks and devices, and its characters, the more you will enjoy it. I have now seen the movie twice and still found myself thinking “did they really just do that?” on my second viewing. Yes. Yes, they did. And it’s great.
Neither cynicism nor despair

Boots Riley is a veteran hip hop artist, notably fronting long-lived Bay Area group The Coup. He is also a life-long political activist. It is the perspective afforded by his long political experience that makes so much of the movie refreshing, energizing, and hopeful. There’s a lot wrong in the world of Sorry to Bother You. Its ills offer only a slight exaggeration of our own. But Riley does not descend to cynicism or despair. And more importantly, he does not retreat from politics. It is the politics of class, cooperation, and solidarity. It demands the laborious work of building a better world from the bottom up.
There is a scene where one of the characters has an opportunity to appear on all the big news and late-night shows to implore their fellow citizens to do something! by calling their congressional representatives. It fails utterly, and we are then treated to one of purest demonstrations of the film’s politics. We are told that it failed because everyone knew their congressperson would do nothing, and the problem – too big for any one person to solve – compels most people to adapt and get used to things rather than fight a losing battle.
But, and this is where Riley’s refusal to retreat from politics and organizing comes in, the answer is not the traditional heroics of the individual – the solution doesn’t come from an epic confrontation between one character and another – it is the return to collective struggle and the strike for better conditions and the victory over scab labour and their police protection. That simple, uncompromising, and hopeful view of politics has perhaps never been more important.
Sorry to Bother You is easily one of the most original and entertaining movies that will come out this year and it deserves to be seen in the theatre. Activists and organizers will, I think, get special delight from the movie’s politics but it is too good and weird a movie to have its merits reduced to its political message alone. Whatever you do, don’t let this one pass you by.