Sorry To Bother You...

...But from social satire, to horrifyingly accurate, to outright BANANAS, here is the most brilliant comedy with the ballsiest third act of any movie in 2018.

It has been over a week since I saw this film and I am STILL shook. 

If you have NOT seen this movie change that IMMEDIATELY. I don’t know much, but I know movies and this one is something special.

Sorry To Bother You is 100% not the movie you think it is. At all. And it’s all the better for it. This film is BRILLIANT. Flat out. I won’t hear otherwise. This movie is an ingenious piece of original brevity; a film that tricks audiences into thinking they’re watching a normal satire on living and working in a Trump-America (which it is exactly that) and morphs into a dark, ugly (and often hilarious) harsh look in the mirror. With an insane twist. 

  I mean first off, there are SO many damn hats to top off in every direction. For starters, where the hell did FIRST TIME writer-director (former rapper) Boots Riley come from and WHERE can I shake his hand? Are you kidding me with this movie? You’re telling me some guy named BOOTS popped up one day and was like “Ight fam. I’m gonna totally Jordan-Peele America right now and rug-pull a normal satire into a GONZO third-act-twist which is both frighteningly hilarious and horrifyingly accurate at the exact same time”??? 

You’re goddamned right he did.

  I mean the AMOUNT of cleverly written nods and references Riley throws in is insane. What starts off as a formulaic Devil’s Advocate precautionary tale morphs into a hip, political Michel Gondry inspired mind trip. But even then the whole thing eventually evolves into an independent beast of satire that sinks its teeth much deeper into audience expectation than you could ever predict. 

  Every major character has an arc that speaks volumes whether it’s through Detroit's (Tessa Thompson) political protest or by clever play on words. I mean our hero is literally named Cassius Green but goes by Cash. So his name is CASH GREEN... In a workplace satire about MONEY. 

GUYS THIS MOVIE IS GENIUS

  Speaking of Cash, let’s breeze through the part where we should just cast Lakeith Stanfield in everything because he’s the most relatable actor of all time (and just a peach) and skip right to Armie Hammer and that bananas third act.

(Mr. Show Stealer)

*FULL SPOILERS AHEAD*

This is PERHAPS some of Hammer's best work to date if only for the deadpan humor in playing a psychotic villain who, in a brilliantly written monologue about his understandable but still evil plot, continuously explains to young Cash that he’s not crazy.

  And let’s address the elephant in the room. Or should I say the f**king HORSE in the room.

ARE YOU PULLING MY LEG WITH THAT TWIST? 

C'MON BOOTS

  In a world where so many movies are afraid to take bold risks it’s such a breath of fresh air to see a brand new filmmaker take the plunge and unveil a climax as gutsy and out-of-left-field as this one. It’s a twist that the moment it’s introduced will evenly divide audiences in one direction or another. Once Hammer plays that video you either roll with the madness, or not at all (You can clearly see where I stand).

  I mean first of all, I’m a product of the 80s and grew up in the 90s. This MF watched a LOT of Jim Henson so if anyone can appreciate fucking PUPPETS it’s this guy. I can’t tell you how many times I just demand puppets in every movie. EVERY movie. Name a movie without puppets. ANY movie. Now add puppets. Is the movie instantly better? That’s what I thought.

  I was already loving this movie but once they rolled out the puppets? I was LOCKED in.

  And the fact that Hammer is growing mutated HORSE PEOPLE is not only right up by demented taste for horror but the horse puppet people look like the goddamned NINJA TURTLES FROM THE 1990 FILM. 

I'M NOT KIDDING

  And the fact that they looked like monsters but still talked and acted like regular dudes was flat-out brilliant. This was the turning point for me.

  And the fact that Cash LITERALLY has to go through shit in order to expose them ONLY FOR THE PEOPLE TO NOT CARE is a complete mirror, both genius and terrifying, that's being held up to our country right now.

   The fact that nearly every single background character not only didn’t seem to mind, but some even embraced the horse-people mutations is so twisted, but no image on screen in 2018 has depicted the horrifying reality of the current state of America more effectively than when we see it in Lakeith’s eyes. And the fact that more characters were concerned with making the “Cash-can-wig” Halloween costume than they were with the f**king HORSE PEOPLE speaks VOLUMES to this nation’s ignorance. 

But even beyond the bananas third-act twist, this is also just a brilliant commentary on the economic scale of the American workplace and the classes of people. You've got the protagonists Cash (Stanfield), Detroit (Thompson) and Squeeze (Yeun) who rebel against the system in their low-paid telemarketing cubicle jobs but once Langston (Danny Glover) introduces the selling tip of comically using a "white voice" to sell over the phone that's when shit gets real.

  On a surface level, watching Danny Glover speak over the phone and hearing Steve Buscemi's voice is nothing short of hilarious. But once we explore Lakeith's white voice (David Cross) and Mr. ____'s (Patton Oswalt) as they're instructed to use their white voices at all times in person, that's when shit takes a turn.

  The running theme of Cash's motivation is that he's consistently making uncomfortable decisions when offered a sum of money. He's driven from uneasy to humiliation as the film progresses. There's a moment where the racial satire comes to a point where Cash is invited to Steve Lift's (Hammer) party and he's told to perform hip-hop in front of the crowd and when Cash freezes up he doesn't know what else to do other than chant "n**ga sh*t!" over and over until a sea of white people are chanting it back at him. It's a moment that perfectly encapsulates both the easily tolerated racism and the drive to do literally anything for money.

Another moral to never trust a white man offering lots of money

  BUT THEN the third act twist happens and once Lift pops in that video and forces Cash to watch as he plans to run factories with horse people, audiences will probably be reminded of Get Out, 2017's Oscar winning smash hit, that also happened to be a racial satire.

Of course the biggest difference between STBY and Get Out  is that while Get Out does feature an insane third act, it never quite delves into madness the way that STBY does. 

  The film gets political but it's also so f**king ridiculous that by the time the horse people roll out and once we get that bananas climax, the insanity might remind folks of Mother! in its polarizing ending rather than Get Out. 

  Regardless, it's a ballsy finale unlike anything else you're likely to see in 2018.

  This film is NUTS and it’s everything. It has Steven Yeun who’s impossible to dislike and it’s got Tessa Thompson who’s a total babe. The film is a satire on every broad topic. It’s a workplace satire, a racial satire, a corporate America satire, it’s a fucking satire on this country RIGHT at this moment and it’s a genius piece of work.

  And that ending? OUTRAGEOUS. As if to remind you that you didn't just watch a pretty strange satire that goes full-on bananas in the last twenty minutes, that final credits sequence is a reminder that this film is absurd and if embraced outright hilarious.

  God I hate Trump but his presidency has inspired some of the most creative work to ever explode out of the film industry.

Even if the unknown future is still haunting

*5 points to Tessa
*10 points to Lakeith
*10 points to Hammer
*50 points to puppets
*20 points to Boots


KEEP THOSE BOOTS RIDING