SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (2018)

Let’s get this out of the way right at the start: Boots Riley from The Coup made a movie.

We’ll say it again. Boots Riley from The Coup made a movie.

If you don’t know The Coup, you’ll be given a pass as long as you go and spend your money on Sorry To Bother You. The Coup, out of Oakland, is comprised of Boots Riley and DJ Pam The Funkstress. Pam recently passed, but The Coup remains under the engine of Boots’ tireless work ethic.

Subject matter-wise, The Coup is squarely in the “worker’s rights” camp, with countless bars detailing the ways in which the American worker gets fucked, who is doing the fucking and how exactly one can fuck up the fuckers if they so choose.

All of this over balls out funk. Sometimes with a live band, sometimes over fat chops, always banging.

That’s the Cliff’s Notes version of The Coup. Do your googles. 

So given what we know about The Coup and their politics, its no surprise that their chief used a palatable format (a twee indie comedy) as a Trojan Horse for a pro-worker story about unionizing, viral fame, respectability politics, gentrification, art and biological horror.

But what if we didn’t know about The Coup? What about those poor bastards? Well those people are in for one hell of a twist. Not just in the bonkers third act, but in the moment they realize that the clever comedy they saw in the trailer about a black guy with a David Cross voice is just one tiny piece of an incredibly detailed and astounding whole.

But this review is not for those people. This is for The Coup fans. This is for us, aka the only review on the internet to call out the fact that Mistah F.A.B. and Lyrics Born are in this movie.

Without spoiling anything, Sorry To Bother You follows Cassius Green
(Lakeith Stanfield), a broke Oakland resident living in his uncle’s garage with his reactionary artist girlfriend. Both are barely scraping by until Cassius lands a job at a greasy telemarketing company, where each call is illustrated by Cassius’ desk crashing, Gondry-style directly into the homes of those he is bothering.

And that Gondry thing isn’t just a tossed off reference. Boots is openly, hilariously beefing with Michel Gondry as we speak.

He fails at this job until string tie enthusiast Danny Glover puts him on to a trick: Use your white voice. Voiced by David Cross, Cassius discovers he not only has an effective white voice, but maybe the most effective telemarketing voice of all time.

While Cassius rises through the ranks as a power caller, his voiceless call center comrades find a different kind of voice - the collective voice of the worker - unionizing for better wages, instituting work stoppages, and demonstrating all the little details that can only come from someone who wants to entertain and educate.

Again, thats not some nonsensical writerly stretch. Boots wants this movie to be shown in schools to break down the benefits and processes behind unionizing. Among all the other things this movie is, it is also a how to guide.

But Sorry To Bother You is far from dry. Every step along the way there are brilliant flourishes that add color to this mildly dystopic (but actually just current) funhouse mirror version of Oakland. Like the tiny door in a whiskey bottle where Danny Glover gets a smaller whiskey bottle, or “I Just Got The Shit Kicked Out Of Me”, the most popular show on television, or Omari Hardwick’s eyepatch + facial hair accessorizing, or the MTV Cribs style commercials for Worry Free, a late-capitalist hell where you live and work in exactly the same place forever.

As the film progresses, this How To Guide gradually becomes something like a Manga from the weirder end of the bookstore. And it works. It does not buckle under the weight of ideas, it thrives and grows and embraces its mutations.

And it has Mistah F.A.B. and Lyrics Born doing cameos. Not sure if we mentioned that.

So in short, go see this. Go see it so it succeeds and Boots Riley gets more checks to make more art. Go see it and learn how to unionize. Go see it as a way to learn more about The Coup. Go see it because you liked Lakeith Stanfield in ATLANTA. Go see it because you love the idea of Boots Riley beefing with Michel Gondry. Whatever reason you need. Just go see it.