Spot of bother

CHICAGO RAPPER DELIGHTS WITH INVENTIVE WORKPLACE SATIRE

snowstorm of tumbling A4 around despairing employees.

A stop-motion animated instruction video credited to Michel Dongry is a nod to inventive French director Michel Gondry and a flaccid pun on the male appendage, which features so prominently in the film’s loopy final act.

Dialogue crackles, from a workplace protest that inspires one young woman to gush, “That scene was crazy, like Norma Rae!”, to the Machiavellian CEO who perceives anyone who can analyse a problem and adapt as “a cunning raccoon”.

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 tentative first 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), who manages the Power Caller team, and Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), 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 while Thompson is poorly served as the film’s female lead but she relishes her character’s standout scene of performance art.

Writer-director Riley holds firm to his ambitious and outlandish vision, and occasionally draws blood with his barbs