"Before long, their cartoonish heists get them caught up in a rivalry with the elitist fashion mogul Christie Smith (Demi Moore), whose lofty diatribes about her art cloak a conservative, tough-on-crime political agenda. The Velvet Gang, as the boosters are known, join forces with retail worker Violeta (Eiza González) and Chinese garment worker Jianhu (Poppy Liu) to take down Smith through a surreal scheme that unspools reality and unveils a heinous secret."
"Using art to fuel a mass working-class movement has been an ambition of Riley's since he got his start as a rapper in the early '90s with his group, The Coup. With I Love Boosters, the 55-year-old activist-turned-director arrives at a new height of his career: His first wide-release feature, with a star-studded cast, backing from prestige production company NEON and a $20 million budget, all to create a technicolor, eye-popping ode to the power of collective organizing."
"Riley has spent years giving talks about how, a century ago, labor strikes forced politicians to create basic social welfare programs that helped lift working people out of poverty. He wants to bring that back. "We need a mass, militant, radical labor movement that uses the withholding of labor as a tactic and strategy to affect policy change," he says. With today's income inequality drawing comparisons to the Gilded Age, I Love Boosters is Riley's bet on whether he can make the revolution sexy, and whether he can use the ultra-capitalist Hollywood system for his decidedly anti-capitalist ends."
""What gets people to get involved in things is not anger or fear," Riley says. "It's optimism that there's something that they can do. And so that's what my writing normally is, is pointing to what actually can be done.""
A group of cartoonish boosters becomes entangled in a rivalry with elitist fashion mogul Christie Smith, whose public statements mask a tough-on-crime political agenda. The Velvet Gang joins forces with Violeta, a retail worker, and Jianhu, a Chinese garment worker, to take down Smith through a surreal plan that disrupts reality and reveals a heinous secret. The film’s creator, an activist turned director, aims to revive the power of labor strikes that once forced politicians to create social welfare programs. He seeks a mass, militant, radical labor movement that uses withholding of labor to change policy, emphasizing optimism and collective organizing as the driver of participation.
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