There’s a level of absurdity throughout Sorry To Bother You that is unlike anything I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s themes of racism, classism, labor unrest and art conception are all made to serve the comedy – nothing outshines the insane imagery throughout the screenplay. Writer-director Boots Riley is making the kind of movie here that is so far beyond what audiences can comprehend. One viewing feels so inefficient given just how weird everything in this movie is. And yet, there’s something perfect about it, and how it fits exclusively within our current moment of crisis, a brilliant distillation of millennial socioeconomic anxiety and a monstrous takedown of contemporary American culture. This is a movie that feels like it could only be talking about today, and so, why not dismantle everything? Why not use every image in your arsenal to show just how absurd 2018 America is?
The movie stars Lakeith Stanfield, an actor who has evolved from the troubled teen of Short Term 12 in 2013 to getting the biggest laughs in Atlanta, Donald Glover’s grand opus of American blackness. His short career has spanned many roles, from the tragic martyrdom of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Selma to the now-iconic performance of the lobotomized Andre in Get Out. Sorry To Bother You is Stanfield’s first chance to carry a movie, a good test to see if his low-energy intensity can make it through an 100-minute arc. There’s a bashfulness to Stanfield, a roving disassociation that marks all his characters, which has allowed him to play such disparate parts – he can do haunted just as well as distracted. Riley calls upon Stanfield to do everything here, and the young actor shows he is the kind of idiosyncratic movie star we need today. A performer whose modesty can make way to generosity and grace with his fellow actors, but who can also command the screen when it counts.
Stanfield plays Cassius “Cash” Green, an unemployed young man living in his uncle’s garage plagued by existential fears of his own insignificance. His girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), is a provocative visual artist whose exhibitionist shows (and incredible earring selection) show the world her unique voice. Meanwhile, he’s four months late on rent with an angry uncle (a very funny Terry Crews) who’s a short while away from having his home foreclosed on. Eventually, Cash gets a job working for Regal View, a telemarketing company in Oakland. Regal View has very little standards, they’ll hire just about anybody as long as they “stick to the script”, and even when Cash is caught lying during his interview, the Regal View manager sees it as an example of his tenaciousness. In his first days on the job, Cash struggles to get out a sentence before being hung up on. That’s when he’s given a tip from a long-time Regal View employee, Langston (Danny Glover): use your White Voice.
Langston doesn’t mean use proper grammar, but instead inhabit the carefree (and uncaring) attitude of the un-oppressed. To his surprise, Cash finds that his White Voice comes to him rather easily, and he quickly shoots up the board of Regal View’s top sellers. With enough sales, Cash can not only help his uncle save his house, but eventually he can become a Top Caller, an illustrious title that gets him to a more luxurious floor and an otherworldly salary. Cash’s progression meets some resistance in the form of an employee strike, led by his friend Salvador (Jermaine Fowler) and another organizer named Squeeze (Steven Yeun). When the two are able to gather enough employees to give Regal View proper trouble, Cash becomes troubled in choosing between his newfound financial success and the plight of his fellow co-workers. He also gets pushback from Detroit who is unsure about her boyfriend’s newfound obsession with being a moneymaker.
There are many other plot lines in Sorry To Bother You, mostly including a monolithic Silicon Valley corporation called WorryFree which promises people a life independent from everyday economic stress in exchange for a lifetime of servitude. There’s also the story of WorryFree’s eccentric CEO Steve Lift (a note-perfect Armie Hammer) who spins many a bad PR moment into proof of WorryFree’s ultimate goal of bettering the world. Cash ultimately ends up in Lift’s orbit, but half of the fun in Riley’s film is seeing just how cleverly everything plays out, so I’ll save the details of how they come together for you. What I will say is that not since 1964’s Dr. Strangelove have I seen a comedy be so incredibly funny about such serious stuff. Bubbling below Sorry To Bother You‘s snarky punchlines is a foundation of societal anger, a weariness of the upper class’ exploitation of vulnerable bodies.
Boots Riley, known mostly as a rapper/lead vocalist in the groups The Coup (which provided the soundtrack to this film) and Street Sweeper Social Club, makes his filmmaking debut here. Riley perhaps lacks the polish of a more seasoned filmmaker, but there is a stunning amount of creativity throughout Sorry To Bother You which could only come from someone who hasn’t spent thirty years making Hollywood films. The film, which uses lots of practical effects to pull off some of its zaniest images, owes a bit to Michel Gondry, who has always been one of the best at utilizing camera tricks and trap doors to create innovative illusions. But Riley isn’t as sincere as Gondry has been in his films, but instead is plugging these effects into a truly disassociated world, contextualizing a hellish universe that pushes someone like Cash into a form of inhumanity in order to survive. Sorry To Bother You‘s trailer can lead you to expect certain things, but I certainly wasn’t expecting Marxism. What other comedy in 2018 is giving you that?
Riley’s choices here, his visions of dystopia and malice, are the most clearly any film yet has illustrated what it’s like in Trump’s America. It’s level of absurdity is unmatched, and how else could you puncture an empirical country that loudly touts its greatness while simultaneously dismantling and redacting the main things that made it great in the first place? Its understanding of how America views people of color, whose success is only appreciated through the prism of white authority, is fundamental. Its depiction of how our society is satiated with inanity, distracted by consumerism, and bluntly assaulted by moral atrocity on such a regular basis that we accept it as reality, seems precise, perhaps prescient. I don’t think Riley finds any of this at all funny, but that he can make a film funny enough to scare you straight is something that must be admired.
Written and Directed by Boots Riley