London Film Festival 2018: 'Sorry To Bother You' Film Review

The more you watch, the weirder it gets.

Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You has been hailed by critics and audiences as "Get Out on acid", but I think that description dilutes the brave and insanely creative storytelling on display here. Sure, there are a few sequences that seem similar to 2017's race-thriller, but for the most part Sorry To Bother You tackles completely different aspects of one large topic.

This film is deeply surrealist. This surrealism is first introduced in the form of fun, creative visual flairs but Sorry To Bother You gets more and more insane in a progression that escalates right up until the final scene. While the comparison, then, to Get Out seems slightly patronizing, the "on acid" part was pretty on the money.

Much of the film's fun comes from this progression into insanity, so I refuse to talk too deeply about even some of the themes discussed in the fear that this review will numb what has to be one of the craziest cinematic experiences of the decade. I can, though, give you the general premise.

Lakeith Stanfield plays Cassius Green, a man living in his Uncle Sergio's (Terry Crews) garage with his girlfriend (Tessa Thompson). Desperate for money, Green finds employment at a call centre where his path to success rests on his ability to use his 'white voice'. For those unaware, black people are sometimes only taken seriously by officials or customers if they adopt a different manner of speaking, a manner referred to by the black community as  their inner 'white voice'. Riley makes an amusing creative decision to completely dub over Stanfield when Green is using his 'white voice' with white actor David Cross. This is just one of the creative approaches Riley makes to explore systematic racism. 

Riley masters walking the thin line between comedy and commentary.  Sure, a lot of this film is comedic in tone, but a lot of the scenes will leave you cringing in your seat. I don't think that's a bad thing, though. If certain scenes in this film make you uncomfortable then the film has done its job. 

Tessa Thompson plays Detroit, Cassius' radical girlfriend who is vehemently anti-capitalist, feminist and progressive. Thompson, who recently lent her charm to Marvel Studios' Thor Ragnarok and is set to appear in Avengers 4 next year, proves once again to be charismatic and enjoyable to watch. Her youthful energy perfectly complements the more downtrodden character of Green, and tensions fly between the two when she discovers Cassius' employers have offered him a promotion - a promotion that itself is the epitome of everything corrupt about capitalism. 

The film itself is, much like Thompson's Detroit, unabashedly critical of capitalism. Within this, though, lies a deeper exploration of systematic racism - an intrinsic form of racism that's bolstered through the uneven opportunities that capitalist cultures offer. 

Armie Hammer excels in the film as Steve Lift, the fictional CEO of 'WorryFree', a corporation which offers people bedding and food for life in exchange for hard labour. Riley uses Hammer's character to comment on multiple different things. Whether he's posed like Jesus on a magazine cover (referring to how Jesus is presented as a white man despite having been dark-skinned) or posed on a large, white horse on the cover of his book (mirroring the poster for the KKK's film The Birth of a Nation), the character of Steve Lift always offers biting social commentary.

As you can see, this is a film so intricately cutting that it could easily be studied as part of a film degree. While the comedy doesn't always land perfectly and the pacing, at times, feels a bit slow, there are multiple sequences in this film which are quite fantastic. As the film gets weirder and weirder these fantastic, subtle takes on society start to become more overt and because of that the film loses a tiny bit of its magic, but on the whole Sorry To Bother You proves to be an astounding feature film debut for Boots Riley. 

This wont be everyone's cup of tea, but if you enjoyed Janelle Monae's Dirty Computer, Get Out, BlacKkKlansman or Donald Glover's Atlanta, then you're sure to have a great experience with Sorry To Bother You. 

'Sorry To Bother You' will be released in UK cinemas on the 7th December 2018.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Written by James Green