![]() ![]() That proves problematic for Detroit, who in addition to her day job as a sign-twirler and her sideline as a performance artist is also a secret Left Eye activist. But before they can make an impact, Cassius gets promoted upstairs to the inner sanctum of “power callers.” Another co-worker, Squeeze ( Steven Yeun), sees Cassius’ enterprise as a potential asset in a growing employee movement to unionize and demand fair wages and benefits. But when his cube-farm neighbor (Glover) advises him to use his “white voice” (dubbed by David Cross), suddenly he’s making fast phone friends and sealing deals. And the highest-rated show on TV is I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me, which as its title suggests, is all about violence and humiliation, forcing contestants not just to take a beating but also to swim through a river of feces.Ĭassius struggles at first to earn commissions in the telemarketing job, and an amusing visual device drops him physically into the homes he’s calling, showing how hard it is to get customers’ attention. ![]() Billboards and television ads are ubiquitous for Worry Free, an insidious corporation providing a career-and-housing package, decried as the new slavery by a protest group called Left Eye. Riley stitches in digs at a country where capitalism has run amok and popular entertainment has reached an all-time low. That thought more or less evaporates the instant it’s uttered, though the scene does yield one of the movie’s funniest gags, when a defective door springs open just as the action is heating up between Cassius and Detroit, revealing that he’s living in the garage of his uncle ( Terry Crews), with four months of back-rent owing. It takes place in an alternative version of present-day Oakland, California, where Cassius Green (Stanfield) fakes his credentials for a telemarketing job and gets called on it but lands the position anyway, because basically, they’ll take anyone who can read and stick to the script.īack home in bed with his girlfriend Detroit (Thompson), Cassius has a mini crisis of conscience, wondering whether, by the time he dies, he will have done anything of lasting significance. It’s like being clobbered over the head with a horse penis, which makes sense once you’ve seen the movie. And on the big screen, last year’s Get Out set a thrilling new standard for merciless social and cultural observation.Īll of which makes Sorry to Bother You seem labored and obvious. ![]() There’s room for a broad spectrum of comedy dealing with Black identity, but the bar has been seriously raised in recent years with razor-sharp television like Atlanta (which launched Stanfield), Dear White People (adapted from the hilarious indie movie that provided Thompson with her breakout role) and Insecure, which weighs the struggle between professional achievement and personal fulfillment with peerless finesse. The movie’s scattershot focus and wildly hit-and-miss jokes might have seemed more at home in Sundance’s NEXT section for innovative emerging voices, rather than the dramatic competition usually reserved for more mature work. But while the filmmaking is raw, undisciplined and groaning under a cargo of self-conscious quirks, it scores points for originality and wacky creativity, which no doubt will earn it avid supporters. In terms of its grounding in a recognizable contemporary world, the movie doesn’t muster much clarity of vision it feels more like one long stoner riff than a serious observation of shifting cultural realities. Hip-hop recording artist Boots Riley makes an ambitious bow as writer-director with Sorry to Bother You, a blithely messy absurdist satire about African American identity in a social climate where success often tends to be defined as selling out. ![]()
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