Critic Reviews

Buffeted by both an incredible cast and crew, I Love Boosters is an unexpected celebration of friendship, community, and solidarity.

For such heavy political themes and rallying cries to action, Riley makes it wildly entertaining, with eye-popping visuals, and a circus-inspired score by Tune-Yards. What’s most important is that among all the mishaps and misadventures, his message never loses its clarity: Liberation is for everyone, and, most importantly, it should be fun.

Funny, occasionally raunchy and dressed in a deliciously rainbow-bright array of costumes, Boots Riley’s fizzy caper “I Love Boosters” is just the thing for summer.

Possibly the messiest great movie of 2026.

Riley, proving himself to be a romantic just as he is a believer in revolution, clearly not only loves these boosters with hearts of gold, but anyone that is trying to make it all work for themselves and those around them.

I find it hard to wish Riley would rein himself in when the excess is so much a part of the film’s joy.

Though its many narrative twists and amusing turns might wear down less adventurous viewers, this film will be embraced by those who enjoyed the director’s dystopian critique Sorry to Bother You and his equally scathing series I’m a Virgo.

Boots Riley is a genuine original, and in I Love Boosters, he makes a statement as wildly entertaining as possible.

This film isn’t for everyone’s tastes. Then again, neither was Sorry to Bother You‘s mix of critical commentary and absurdist comedy; and, like that film, I Love Boosters takes a wilder, big-picture swerve in its third act. Still, you have to admire the fact that Riley is weaponizing his humor and using it to brusquely jostle your brain by any means necessary.

I Love Boosters is full of major swings and plenty of individual concepts that could take up an entire film, yet Riley balances everything this movie is trying to do quite well.