It is certainly “robbin’ season” in Boots Riley’s highly anticipated sophomore film, “I Love Boosters.”
On Wednesday, Jan. 27, Neon dropped the first official trailer for the film about the stylish shenanigans of a crew of Bay Area shoplifters so chic it’s a crime, starring Keke Palmer alongside Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, LaKeith Stanfield, Don Cheadle, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, and Demi Moore.
With vibrant colors and almost Seussian-level fashion and glamour, the bold and brazen Corvette (Palmer) pulls together a team to help her steal from major high-end boutiques and designers in the Bay Area, including one in particular (Moore), in what looks like a brightly colored, genre-pushing, high-energy heist romp. The outfit plans to swipe luxury duds and resell them on the street, marked down just enough to turn a profit.
“It’s like community service,” Ackie’s character, Sade, explains at one point in the trailer. Meanwhile, Paige’s character, Mariah, calls it “Triple F”: “Fashion, Forward, Filanthropy.” Don’t worry, she makes it clear she knows how to spell philanthropy.
Riley serves as both writer and director, as he did on his 2018 breakout film, “Sorry to Bother You,” which also starred Stanfield alongside Tessa Thompson in the wild rabbit hole plot about a Black man who begins to succeed as a telemarketer after adopting a white-sounding voice. In 2023, Riley arrived on the small screen with the Amazon Prime original series “I am a Virgo,” an oddball dramedy about a coming-of-age teen who just so happens to be a giant.
A day before the trailer dropped for “I Love Boosters,” Riley revealed in an Instagram post that he had initially planned to keep Cheadle’s casting a surprise but couldn’t contain his excitement any longer.
“We were keeping it a surprise, but then we thought F— THE SURPRISE,” he wrote. “Don Cheadle is also in this, and he’s brilliant.”
“I Love Boosters” will have its world premiere at SXSW on March 12 before hitting theaters on May 22.
