Sorry to Bother You
Directed by: Boots Riley
Written by: Boots Riley
Starring: Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Kate Berlant, Michael X. Sommers, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, Armie Hammer, Robert Longstreet, Forest Whitaker
Voices by: David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Lily James, Rosario Dawson
Comedy/Fantasy/Sci-Fi - 105 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Jul 2018
Written by: Boots Riley
Starring: Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Kate Berlant, Michael X. Sommers, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, Armie Hammer, Robert Longstreet, Forest Whitaker
Voices by: David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Lily James, Rosario Dawson
Comedy/Fantasy/Sci-Fi - 105 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Jul 2018
In 2001 as an undergrad, I heard a few songs from an album from a self-described hip-hop revolutionary collective called The Coup. The song I most remember is “5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O.” I wasn’t an experimental communist in college, but the song had a funky beat. Boots Riley, the main creative force behind The Coup, carries over similar themes into his first feature film, Sorry to Bother You. It’s not exactly anti-capitalist, but it is most certainly pro-collective bargaining, advocates for a fair living wage, and warns against the inherent greed and corruption in the business world’s upper echelon. Sorry to Bother You is also an overt critique on particular sociological, economic, and racial issues in a smelling salt sort of way. It’s startling.
Fair or not, Sorry to Bother You will be compared and contrasted with last year’s Get Out. They operate under different genre rules, but they confront somewhat similar stereotypes. On the surface level, the unskilled and uneducated workforce are treated like chattel by mid-level management and reminded to just “follow the script”. No outside the box thinking allowed. Dig a bit deeper and discover the warnings Boots Riley has about our society’s near future. All-powerful corporations led by the morally corrupt may introduce modern forms of indentured servitude and slavery as the means to achieve efficiency.
Fair or not, Sorry to Bother You will be compared and contrasted with last year’s Get Out. They operate under different genre rules, but they confront somewhat similar stereotypes. On the surface level, the unskilled and uneducated workforce are treated like chattel by mid-level management and reminded to just “follow the script”. No outside the box thinking allowed. Dig a bit deeper and discover the warnings Boots Riley has about our society’s near future. All-powerful corporations led by the morally corrupt may introduce modern forms of indentured servitude and slavery as the means to achieve efficiency.
Sorry to Bother You takes place in an alternate-world Oakland. The most popular show on TV is “I Got the S*%^ Kicked Out of Me!” I wonder if this is a nod to Idiocracy, a failure turned cult classic which featured the TV show, “Ow My Balls!” There are billboards and commercials sponsored by Worryfree. You and your entire family can sign a contract whereby all of your meals and housing are paid for if you work for Worryfree the rest of your life. You live in a warehouse compound in bunkbed style with all the other Worryfree families, but hey, no bills to pay. "If you lived here, you'd be at work by now!" This is pure social satire, but does it honestly feel that outrageous?
Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield, Atlanta), tired of living in his uncle’s garage and not being able to provide nice things for his girlfriend, starts working as a telemarketer selling encyclopedias. At first, he’s miserable. He stutters, he doesn’t believe in what he is selling, and he works on commission. The office situation has a Joe vs. the Volcano vibe with punishing overhead lighting and horror movie coffee center. There is no money in Cassius Green’s future. But then, Cassius discovers his ‘White Voice’. He communicates with his suburban clientele like he’s calling them from his yacht and he’s even overdubbed by David Cross (Arrested Development) - perhaps the ultimate White Voice.
Cassius shatters sales records; this is what he was born to do. Suddenly, Cassius is a “Power Caller,” can use the golden elevator to the top floor, and begins to sell major league and ethically complicated materiel. Yet, just as Cassius finally earns himself some self esteem and a significant amount of pocket money for the first time in his life, he alienates girlfriend and performance artist, Detroit (Tessa Thompson, Annihilation), and his band of blue collar, workaday co-workers. Detroit wears her art such as earrings which say, "Murder Murder Murder" and "Kill Kill Kill" as well as my new favorite T-shirt, "The Future is Female Ejaculation". To achieve greatness, Cassius may have to sacrifice his old life. None of this is particularly original ground - the rise and fall of a nobody is nothing new.
What is new is how the almighty corporation is going to reshape our world. The concept of the literal man-hour may go extinct. The more Cassius learns about what is to come, the more shocking and downright jaw-dropping Boots Riley’s imagination is. Riley draws on his own telemarking experience to create this soulless world and Cassius’s office life is probably not far from the real deal. Riley films Cassius’s first attempts on the phone as a literal crash-landing into people’s homes and and lives. The phone shoves Cassius uninvited into the kitchen of a woman whose husband is dying of cancer and right next to a couple fornicating on the living room couch.
Sorry to Bother You is an absurdist dark comedy, but it doesn’t come off as that absurd - at least the first-half. Mega corporations are influencing and evolving humanity - think Google, Apple, and eventually Tesla. It’s no wonder Cassius suffers from a depressing existential angst. It comes of as peculiar that a man with perhaps one of the worst jobs on the planet, telemarketing, worries about dying at 90 years-old without having accomplished anything and being forgotten by history. Should it be so surprising? Boots Riley doesn’t think so and he storms into theaters with a bang to prove it.
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