Critical Consensus Emerges for Boots Riley's 'I Love Boosters' Ahead of Friday Release

'I Love Boosters' hits multiplexes this Friday, May 22, and early critical reactions have been encouraging overall.

The Boots Riley film brings together an ensemble cast including Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, and Demi Moore. The premise follows a group of professional shoplifters targeting a ruthless fashion industry figure, framed as "community service."

The film currently holds a 94% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics weighing in across major outlets.

AV Club awarded it a B, describing it as "another winning amusement park ride in the bright colors of its filmmaker's politics."

Rolling Stone praised the film's satirical approach, noting "The Adult Swim energy is strong here and the satire is sharp in the way that shattered glass flying every which way from a shotgun blast is."

The Hollywood Reporter highlighted the film's perspective, writing that watching it "feels less like being transported into a different universe than putting on X-ray goggles to look at our own — and finding, buried under all the frustration and despair, a joyful and unruly sense of hope."

TheWrap's review emphasized Riley's affection for his characters, observing that the director "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."

Variety acknowledged the film's uneven execution while celebrating its spirit: "The movie, a tall tale of clothes encounters, doesn't always work. Yet there's something disarming about how Riley's sense of play holds this street-smart meta-rebellion fantasy together."

IndieWire also gave it a B, calling it an entertaining political statement with Palmer delivering reliable work at the center: "As far as genre movies that actually turn out to be political missives go, there are worse entertainments. And with Keke Palmer at the front, you're always in sure hands."

Not all critics embraced the film equally. Slant Magazine gave it 2 out of 4 stars, describing it as "arrhythmic, unfocused, and forgetting to breathe," comparing it to "a well-dressed elephant on a unicycle juggling a dozen balls."

Mashable called Riley's sophomore effort "outrageous, provocative, and really f*cking fun."

RogerEbert.com awarded 3 out of 4 stars, praising it as "a wickedly clever skewering of the moral rot at the center of the fashion industry delivered with enough vision to make your eyes hurt."