I often get asked what my
favorite genre of movie is. While don’t exactly have a favorite genre per se, I
do have a type: movies with a bizarre, out-there concept that’s pushed to its
logical extreme but isn’t just weird for weirdness’s sake. For example, my favorite
movie of 2016 was Swiss Army Man, a buddy
comedy where Paul Dano lugs Daniel Radcliffe’s bloated corpse around a forest, and
the corpse talks and has magical farts. (It makes sense in context.) But upon
further examination, it’s actually about loneliness, depression, body dysmorphia,
and the legacy of emotional abuse. Or how about Colossal, which is about a woman who finds out she’s controlling a
giant monster on the other side of the world, but the whole thing is actually a
metaphor for self-destructive behavior and masculine insecurity. Sorry to Bother You fits very
comfortably in this category, starting with a fairly absurd concept and
cranking the absurdity higher and higher until it goes completely off the rails,
but there is a method behind the madness.
Our story follows Cassius
Green (Lakieth Stanfield), a black man from Oakland who gets a job at a telemarketing firm. He struggles at first, but his sales improve immensely when
he starts talking in his “white voice” (David Cross). Eventually he begins
climbing up the corporate ladder and gets promoted to a “power-caller”, much to
the disapproval of his artist/activist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson), who
joins a protest group led by a coworker (Steven Yeun) looking to unionize the
company’s employees. Meanwhile, Cassius’s talent catches the attention of Steve
Lift (Armie Hammer), the CEO of his firm’s parent company WorryFree, a controversial
mega-corporation that provides food and lodging for its employees but doesn’t
pay them and puts them in life-binding contracts. Beyond the debauchery of the
higher-ups, Cassius also discovers the horrifying secret behind the company’s
success.
Directed and written by
socially conscious hip-hop veteran Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You has a lot on its mind and a lot to say, and it
doesn’t waste a second beating around the bush. It’s a manic, freewheeling, riotous
satire with all the subtlety and nuance of a SWAT team raid, aiming its
crosshairs at capitalism, wage inequality, social media, consumerism, cultural
appropriation, hell, WorryFree’s business model is essentially a late capitalist
spin on slavery. Comparisons to Get Out are going to be inevitable. Both are genre-bending
satires of race relations in America with a predominantly black cast and crew made
by a first-time director with no prior film experience done with the craftsmanship
of a seasoned veteran, but that wouldn’t do this justice. I’ve struggled for an
apt comparison, but the best I’ve come up with is this: This is the ice cream
nightmare you’d have after falling asleep while watching Atlanta, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Science of Sleep on three separate TVs.
Presentation wise, the movie hovers
in the same space between fantastical and realism as the works of Spike Jonze
and Michel Gondry, drawing attention to its inherent artifice. Whenever a black
actor starts using their white voice, their dialogue is dubbed over by white
comedians like David Cross and Patton Oswalt. When Cassius makes intrusive cold
calls to unsuspecting customers, the movie visualizes this by literally
dropping him in their house with them. All of this universe’s TV programs, like
the commercials for WorryFree or the wildly popular game show “I Got The Living
Shit Beat Out of Me” are made on blatantly phony sets made of cloth and
cardboard. Considering that we’re currently living in an uncanny valley of surreal
turmoil, the aesthetic only seems appropriate.
Adding to the surreality, the
performances are firing on all cylinders across the board. Lakeith Stanfield
has made a name for himself with supporting roles in Get Out and Atlanta, he
was even one of the few saving graces of that godawful Death Note movie, but here his talents are put their best use. The transformation
he goes through from a slouched, awkward, down-on-his-luck cog in the machine to
abandoning his friend and principles with ease is tangible and conveys so much
with so little. The rest of the cast shines as well, and even though some of
their characters are one-note caricatures, they make it easy to see where they’re
coming from. Tessa Thompson continues to prove herself to be one of Hollywood’s
most invaluable assets in her role Cassius’s feminist performance artist
activist girlfriend, acting as the moral anchor of the story, Danny Glover has
a small but important role as an elderly coworker who shows Cassius how to tap
into his white voice, and Armie Hammer channels Elon Musk and Jordan Belfort as
the delightfully skeezy billionaire who takes him under his wing.
As in-your-face as this movie
is, it still gives you plenty of food for thought. The firebrand imagery of Detroit’s
oversized message-posturing earring or the image of a suave black man with mutton
chops and an eyepatch speaking with Patton Oswalt’s voice might have people
talking on their way out of the theater, but the funniest moments come in the
dialogue. Danny Glover gives a surprisingly nuanced description of what exactly
constitutes a white voice. Cassius and his friend Salvador (Jermaine Fowler)
get into an intense argument that quickly turns into an exchange of venomous
compliments. Later, he’s pressured into rapping at a party, which turns into a
hilarious call-and-response that’s all an elaborate excuse to get a bunch of
white people to joyously shout the N word. But that’s all nothing compared to
the hard left turn the movie takes in the third act. To tell you what happens
would rob you of all reason to see this movie, but if you want something that’ll
send your brain into a tailspin careening into a ditch… well, you’ve already
made it this far into the review, so you should know what to expect. But you
don’t.
Bottom line, Sorry to Bother
You is an absolute must-see. It may not be your thing, it may make you
uncomfortable, you may not even like it, but I guarantee you won’t see anything
like it this summer. Some say that with the success of films like Get Out,
Moonlight and Black Panther, we’re on the cusp of a new renaissance in black
cinema. If it means getting more voices like Boots Riley and more movies like
this, then count me in.
9/10
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