Boots Riley Makes a Hell of a First Impression as a Writer/Director with His Bonkers Satire “Sorry to Bother You”
With that knucklehead Trump in office, satire is now more than ever presented as just satire with all the humor wrung out of it. That’s not to say that it isn’t good or effective, but there’s a reason that Black Mirror and all of it’s contemporaries are doing well at this moment.
Arguably, you could watch Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America? and just look on sadly at the America that we collectively let happen as Cohen shoves that proverbial mirror over and over in our faces.
On the other hand, there’s Sorry To Bother You.
Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You, a feature debut from a multi-hyphenate artist, has so much panache and color and surrealistic elements that it’s ferocious satire is pretty damn enjoyable. In fact, there are echoes of early post-Monty Python Terry Gilliam throughout, which make it’s a message of systemic classism and racism even more accessible.
Think Office Space meets Brazil meets Get Out with The Coup (Boots Riley’s band) thumping in the background.
In any case, you should go see Sorry To Bother You while it’s still in a theater near you.