Critic Reviews

Boots Riley’s first feature is a scintillating comedic outburst of political imagination and visionary fury.

Riley’s film is a welcome hand grenade of subversive power that often reminded me of another incendiary film, Terry Gilliam’s classic "Brazil."

I will be very clear with you, dear readers, that this surrealist comic moral tale, about a poor man selling his soul to ascend in a golden elevator to the heights of a dubious corporation, is a balls-to-the-wall, tits-to-the-glass, spectacular orgy of fist-pumping, anti-capitalist, pro-labor ideas rolled into 105 minutes of gloriously unpredictable plot.

There are a lot of reasons to be thankful for Sorry to Bother You — one being that it represents the return of the inspired/demented midnight-movie satire — but the rise of Lakeith Stanfield to leading man status is probably the most satisfying.

A movie with this strong of a message can easily come off preachy, self-righteous, and didactic, but Riley’s sense of humor and flair for absurdity save it from any of that. Boots Riley feels compelled to say but doesn’t presume to know. He has a way of dreaming rather than grandstanding, of pondering rather than prescribing.

It’s a roiling mix of wry race comedy, economy-grade dystopian sci-fi, and Silicon Valley satire. Also, it's as funny and as caustic as hell.

Certainly weird, confrontational, wildly satirical, and certainly unique, Sorry to Bother You is one of the funniest, energetic, and best films of the year.

Exploding with infectious originality, Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You may be the most wonderfully bizarre film of 2018.

A film of mounting artistic imagination, Sorry to Bother You spirals into a type of mind-bending madness that is both persistently fun and one-of-a-kind.

Mr. Riley isn’t constructing yet another postmodern playhouse out of borrowings and allusions. He’s building a raft, and steering it straight into the foaming rapids of racism, economic injustice and cultural conflict.