Boots Riley's 'I Love Boosters': A critical look at luxury fashion and shoplifting

The film set to steal the spotlight from the ever-popular The Devil Wears Prada 2 will debut in the US on May 22. The 105-minute film, titled I Love Boosters (professional shoplifters), stars Oscar-nominated Demi Moore. The actress plays a prominent fashion figure targeted by the Velvet Gang, a band of shoplifters who steal from luxury stores and rob luxury designers.

In short, the film could be the bitter response to the splendour of The Devil Wears Prada. It is a satire that exposes the miseries and misdeeds of the luxury world, the fashion industry, and the acolytes and followers of designer labels.

Demi Moore plays a fashion figure targeted by a band of shoplifters

The cast includes Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, LaKeith Stanfield, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, Will Poulter and Don Cheadle, alongside Moore.

This is the second feature film as director and screenwriter for Boots Riley, the music producer and rapper who debuted in 2018 with the comedy Sorry to Bother You. Riley also created the Amazon original miniseries I'm a Virgo.

Riley is a living contradiction, “like a mix of bullets and love. He mumbles with perfect diction; he is guilty of his own convictions. Complicated compositions, punctuated propositions, it is a tight and tenacious rhythm, cinema with ambition,” reads his biography on the website of SWXSW, the Texas festival where the film premiered in March. Founded in 1987, the festival is best known for its conferences celebrating the convergence of technology, film and television, music, education and culture.

Boots Riley's I Love Boosters presented as opening film at Austin festival

"Riley's screenplay for Boosters is rooted in a pro-labour, anti-corporate worldview that often verges on radicalism. The film is also surreal, absurd and engagingly funny," wrote the Los Angeles Times.

In the film, which began shooting in Atlanta in November 2024, Keke Palmer plays Corvette. Together with her friends Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), she runs a shoplifting ring, reselling the stolen goods at bargain prices. Things get complicated when they join forces with a Chinese factory worker (Poppy Liu) to take down an imperious fashion tycoon (Demi Moore).

When asked how the idea for the film came about, Riley replied: “I've bought a lot of stuff from boosters (shoplifters) in my life.”

Riley also explained that thinking about the fashion world, in particular, triggered the spiral of ideas that led to the film.

Regarding her part as a villainous fashion designer, Demi Moore said: “At first I was like: wow, I didn't think I'd be considered cool enough to be in a Boots Riley project. It was so out of the box; we had a fantastic meeting and it's a character I would never have put myself forward for. It gave me an incredible space to play, take risks and do something different. I don't think I've ever had the chance to do anything like it.”

“There is some madness in this film, but it is also a very important film to release right now,” the director explained to the Los Angeles Times, “because I think we all need to find ways to change what is happening, ways to fight fascism, ways to change the structure of the world around us.”