Lakeith Stanfield stars as Cassius Green in Boots Riley’s SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, an Annapurna Pictures release.
Director/writer Boots Riley’s ambitious, inspired social satire SORRY TO BOTHER YOU sets its protagonist, a young black man trying to make a living as a telemarketer, in a world nearly like our own but imbued with the surreal, magical realism and even science fiction. The comedy is excellent but the director also makes hold-no-punches points about our country’s unequal economic system.
Bitingly funny, creative and intelligent, SORRY TO BOTHER YOU is a welcome breeze shaking up the summer doldrums and our comfortable assumptions.
Lakeith Stanfield is outstanding as Cassius Green, a likable African American every-man living in Oakland, California, who is struggling to just trying to pay the rent but ambitious to get ahead in life. His girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson) is an aspiring performance and visual artist but works a minimum job as a sign-twirler. Cassius drives a junker car and lives in his uncle’s garage, but the uncle is on the edge of foreclosure. Just in time, Cassius lands a job at a telemarketing firm, RegalView, but new opportunities really open up for him after an older worker named Langston, played by Danny Glover, tips him off to use his “white voice” (provided by David Cross) when selling to customers. Soon he’s making sales and he finds himself conflicted between moving up the corporate ladder and standing by his co-workers as they strike for better wages.
It’s a classic conundrum but Riley uses it as a springboard that takes us through some unusual twists that touch on race, capitalism, prisons, economic opportunity, artists, and other social issues in a fearless and effective fashion. Cassius finds himself lifted from poverty into wealth and material comfort but also finds himself at odds with his own values.
The “white voice” that Cassius and other black characters use are supplied by actors Patton Oswalt, David Cross and Rosario Dawson. Riley mines the “white voice” thing for comedy gold, but never loses the pointed nature of the joke.
This film is the feature film debut for Riley, the head of San Francisco Bay area hip-hop collective The Coup. The film met with critical acclaim when it debuted at Sundance and has been highly anticipated by film buffs.
One can see some parallels with GET OUT but this production was well underway when that film came out. The film starts out in the similar territory as workplace comedy OFFICE SPACE but gets much more surreal as it goes, particularly after Cassius discovers a sinister plan by the company’s celebrity CEO. In an inspired bit of casting, Armie Hammer plays billionaire CEO Steve Lift, a creepy performance that is perhaps Hammer’s best. Another company the billionaire is involved in is called WorryFree, a combination workplace and housing “option” marketed to working people but which looks a lot like prison and offers life-long contract that sounds a lot like slavery.
The director is aided greatly by lead Lakeith Stanfield and a strong supporting cast that includes Omari Hardwick, Jermaine Fowler, Steven Yeun, and Terry Crews. Stanfield seems to be having a moment now. More audiences might recognize him from his small but affecting part in GET OUT but he also delivered a remarkable performance in the less-seen but moving CROWN HEIGHTS, a true-story drama about a young Caribbean immigrant falsely convicted of a crime whose childhood friend fights for years to free him. Stanfield should have received more attention for that affecting performance but perhaps this role will give this gifted actor the fame he deserves.
Sometimes comedy can say hard things more effectively than if they are said directly, as anyone who has seen DR. STRANGLOVE can attest. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU starts out with laugh-out-loud comedy and pointed situations and visual jokes anyone might recognize, but then the film goes deeper. And deeper – down a rabbit hole that runs under our socioeconomic structure, until Cassius Green is Alice in a nightmarish Wonderland that is a fun-house mirror of our own.
This sharp-witted comedy touches on social media, twisted reality-show entertainment, and makes other social commentary in a pointed but comically effective fashion. Where director/writer Boots Riley might lose some audience members is when the film veers directly in science fiction, with an uncomfortable turn that some, particularly black audiences, might find disturbing. Others will follow along with the director in this risky move.
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU is not perfect but it is pretty darn good, a brilliantly ambitious social satire that has the courage to say things about this society that need saying. Boots Riley deserves credit for his willingness to say what he has to say, even when it makes his audience uncomfortable, and Lakeith Stanfield deserves recognition for his winning performance as the ordinary/ not ordinary guy at the center of this excursion into modern madness.
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SORRY TO BOTHER YOU – Review
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Lakeith Stanfield stars as Cassius Green in Boots Riley’s SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, an Annapurna Pictures release.
Director/writer Boots Riley’s ambitious, inspired social satire SORRY TO BOTHER YOU sets its protagonist, a young black man trying to make a living as a telemarketer, in a world nearly like our own but imbued with the surreal, magical realism and even science fiction. The comedy is excellent but the director also makes hold-no-punches points about our country’s unequal economic system.
Bitingly funny, creative and intelligent, SORRY TO BOTHER YOU is a welcome breeze shaking up the summer doldrums and our comfortable assumptions.
Lakeith Stanfield is outstanding as Cassius Green, a likable African American every-man living in Oakland, California, who is struggling to just trying to pay the rent but ambitious to get ahead in life. His girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson) is an aspiring performance and visual artist but works a minimum job as a sign-twirler. Cassius drives a junker car and lives in his uncle’s garage, but the uncle is on the edge of foreclosure. Just in time, Cassius lands a job at a telemarketing firm, RegalView, but new opportunities really open up for him after an older worker named Langston, played by Danny Glover, tips him off to use his “white voice” (provided by David Cross) when selling to customers. Soon he’s making sales and he finds himself conflicted between moving up the corporate ladder and standing by his co-workers as they strike for better wages.
It’s a classic conundrum but Riley uses it as a springboard that takes us through some unusual twists that touch on race, capitalism, prisons, economic opportunity, artists, and other social issues in a fearless and effective fashion. Cassius finds himself lifted from poverty into wealth and material comfort but also finds himself at odds with his own values.
The “white voice” that Cassius and other black characters use are supplied by actors Patton Oswalt, David Cross and Rosario Dawson. Riley mines the “white voice” thing for comedy gold, but never loses the pointed nature of the joke.
This film is the feature film debut for Riley, the head of San Francisco Bay area hip-hop collective The Coup. The film met with critical acclaim when it debuted at Sundance and has been highly anticipated by film buffs.
One can see some parallels with GET OUT but this production was well underway when that film came out. The film starts out in the similar territory as workplace comedy OFFICE SPACE but gets much more surreal as it goes, particularly after Cassius discovers a sinister plan by the company’s celebrity CEO. In an inspired bit of casting, Armie Hammer plays billionaire CEO Steve Lift, a creepy performance that is perhaps Hammer’s best. Another company the billionaire is involved in is called WorryFree, a combination workplace and housing “option” marketed to working people but which looks a lot like prison and offers life-long contract that sounds a lot like slavery.
The director is aided greatly by lead Lakeith Stanfield and a strong supporting cast that includes Omari Hardwick, Jermaine Fowler, Steven Yeun, and Terry Crews. Stanfield seems to be having a moment now. More audiences might recognize him from his small but affecting part in GET OUT but he also delivered a remarkable performance in the less-seen but moving CROWN HEIGHTS, a true-story drama about a young Caribbean immigrant falsely convicted of a crime whose childhood friend fights for years to free him. Stanfield should have received more attention for that affecting performance but perhaps this role will give this gifted actor the fame he deserves.
Sometimes comedy can say hard things more effectively than if they are said directly, as anyone who has seen DR. STRANGLOVE can attest. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU starts out with laugh-out-loud comedy and pointed situations and visual jokes anyone might recognize, but then the film goes deeper. And deeper – down a rabbit hole that runs under our socioeconomic structure, until Cassius Green is Alice in a nightmarish Wonderland that is a fun-house mirror of our own.
This sharp-witted comedy touches on social media, twisted reality-show entertainment, and makes other social commentary in a pointed but comically effective fashion. Where director/writer Boots Riley might lose some audience members is when the film veers directly in science fiction, with an uncomfortable turn that some, particularly black audiences, might find disturbing. Others will follow along with the director in this risky move.
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU is not perfect but it is pretty darn good, a brilliantly ambitious social satire that has the courage to say things about this society that need saying. Boots Riley deserves credit for his willingness to say what he has to say, even when it makes his audience uncomfortable, and Lakeith Stanfield deserves recognition for his winning performance as the ordinary/ not ordinary guy at the center of this excursion into modern madness.
RATING: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars