15, 112 mins
Chicago-born rapper Boots Riley makes his feature film directorial debut with an audacious, wildly inventive and frequently uproarious satire about workplace culture, black exploitation and rampant capitalism.
It’s fair to say that Sorry to Bother You won’t be everyone’s tipple. There are madcap moments in Riley’s script when the wheels threaten to come off this runaway train of thoughts.
However, patience and gargantuan suspensions of disbelief reap rewards over almost two hours that simultaneously bamboozle, delight and astound.
The writer-director has a penchant for visual gags in background detail, like a rogue photocopier which churns out reams of paper, creating a snowstorm of tumbling A4 around despairing employees.
The unlikely hero is Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), known to friends as Cash. He lives in the garage of his uncle Sergio (Terry Crews) with activist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson).
Four months behind on the rent, Cash must find alternative accommodation unless he can raise the balance within two weeks.
He hopes a job as a telemarketer at RegalView alongside friend Salvador (Jermaine Fowler) will answer his prayers.
“We’re not mapping the human genome here,” deadpans Cash’s manager (Robert Longstreet), who instructs him to follow the script and maybe — just maybe — he will be promoted to a power caller desk on the top floor. Cash’s efforts to engage customers are dispiriting failures until an experienced co-worker (Danny Glover) imparts sage words.
“You want to make some money here, read the script with your white voice,” he whispers.
Sure enough, when Cash (now voiced by David Cross) erases all traces of Oakland from his patter, he secures his first sale... then another.
In record time, he is courting the attention of Mr X (Omari Hardwick), the power caller team manager, and Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), the CEO of futuristic employer WorryFree.
Sorry To Bother You plays with madness as Stanfield’s everyman becomes complicit in modern-day slavery on a grotesque scale.
Hammer has a blast in a small supporting role. Thompson is poorly served as the female lead, but she relishes her character’s standout scene of performance art, which incorporates dialogue from the 1985 martial arts film The Last Dragon.
Writer-director Riley holds firm to his ambitious vision, and occasionally draws blood with his barbs.
Damon Smith