Sorry to Bother You is a strange movie that became a surprise hit when it opened in the summer of 2018. Made on a budget of $3.2 million, the movie earned $18.3 million worldwide. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews from critics. Yet despite all the critical acclaim and rather impressive box office numbers considering its minor budget, it has largely been forgotten about and ignored in recent years and also failed to grab any major award nominations in its year of release.
This capitalist satire, directed by rapper Boots Riley, says a lot about where our world is going while also doing it in the most surrealist, fun, scary, and confident ways. Led by LaKeith Stanfield and with great supporting performances by Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun, and Danny Glover. There are many twists and turns in the movie that aren’t going to be spoiled here, but what’s for sure is that the film has an important message about capitalism, greed, and the power of workers if they remain together. The dialogue is interesting, the ideas are daring, the performances are incredible, and there’s some magic realism to give the film both a heightened reality but also draw a terrifying parallel to the real world. Here’s why you should watch the film.
Update February 12, 2024: It has been six years since Sorry to Bother You premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and this article has been updated with more reasons why you should check out this underseen gem.
Capitalism Evilness in a Unique Way
Sorry to Bother You is about Cassius “Cash” Green, the name pronounced “cash is green”, (LaKeith Stanfield), a Black man who only wants some money to get by, as he’s broke. Green gets a new job as a telemarketer, and when he isn’t succeeding, an older Black colleague (Danny Glover) tells him to use his white voice. Cassius follows his advice, and his white voice (David Cross) makes him a star in the company and a “power caller”. Everything looks to be going great for him and his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson), but what he’s selling is really something to worry about a company that hires workers for life, houses them, and feeds them so they can work without any other concerns (what could be seen as slaves).
This film is a scary dystopia. It’s also one of the best movies about capitalism, period. As the best satires always do, it cranks some of the things happening in our world to 11, showing us how we’re not that far off and what the extreme obsession with money has done to our society in a unique, fun way.
Director Boots Riley’s best decision is showing all these ideas in the most surreal, surprising way, making it an incredibly fun ride, mixing many genres, and creating a movie that’s, at the same time, weird, funny, and a little bit unsettling. It all climaxes when Cash goes upstairs as a “power caller”, and gets mixed up with the people in power in the company. The man in charge, Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) doesn’t even see their workers as humans, just as the money they can get for the company; a clear message about exploitation and profit that more people are facing each day.
Boots Riley: One-of-a-Kind Director
Boots Riley was first known as a rapper in the political hip-hop group The Coup, and this was his first movie, directed when he was already 45 years old. Like many of the old-school directors of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, being a director wasn’t something he had been doing his whole life, and all his other experiences gave him a unique point of view. All this helped Sorry to Bother You become the strange, weird, fantastic animal that it is.
Riley uses magic realism to express his ideas, getting inspired by both Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, but also with Michel Gondry. The French’s influences are fairly obvious when Cassius talks to a client, as he drops from his cubicle to the client’s house, and also when he’s getting rich; as he stays in bed with Detroit, everything around them changes, and they’ve become a loft owner, with silk sheets on their bed. It’s visually stimulating while also showing spectacularly how money can change your life.
One of Riley’s greatest strengths is that he doesn’t use the classical three-act structure, so you never know where the movie is going next, and that’s an exhilarating sensation. He knows the only way to “eat our medicine” and watch some anti-capitalist message and confrontational work is by entertaining us, and he hits it out of the park. About the idea of a “white voice” director Boots Riley told The Guardian: “You’d try to obscure the fact that you’re black, just on the very basic level of trying to make someone feel like you’re like them, and on the more racist level of someone being OK giving you their credit card information.”
Great Cast
All these crazy ideas the movie has wouldn’t work without an incredible cast, who not only sell the hell out of the film but also can work through the different mix of the genres that Sorry to Bother You lives in. That’s why casting was so important. Riley and his team nailed it, as most actors did some of their best work on this film. LaKeith Stanfield plays Cash with the right balance of disillusion at first, bravado when things are going well, and “are you kidding me?” panic and confusion when things start unraveling. It’s one of his best performances, as he makes us care for him, even if everything around his character gets crazier and crazier.
The same can be said of his girlfriend, Detroit, and actor Tessa Thompson. Detroit isn’t a realized character, and some even objected to the fact that she’s only there as a soundboard for Cash, but Thompson gives a lived-in performance, one of her best, showing with every gesture, every word, and every interaction, what’s going inside this woman’s head. The character also needs to rig the system using a “white voice”, so she can sell her art, and Thompson commits to the bit impressively, even when she discovers her white voice is British (and is being played by Lily James). Many great actors appear in the film in small roles, or just voicing roles, from David Cross to Patton Oswalt, Danny Glover to Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews to Kate Berlant, and Rosario Dawson to Forest Whitaker, but the other character and performance who deserves our attention is Steven Yeun.
Yeun plays Squeeze, a colleague of Cash who is trying to unionize the whole team of telemarketers, and his performance is great. He’s as charismatic and unique as Stanfield, but in a more worried position than him, someone who hasn’t been seduced by the capitalism and money around him, being the counterpoint to everything that has been happening to our lead character. Not many actors could do all that with a mostly reactive small role, but Yeun, in one of his first appearances after he left The Walking Dead, shows something of the uniqueness that has made him a star in the making and an Oscar-nominated actor.
About being part of the film, LaKeith Stanfield told IndieWire: “I didn’t quite understand it the first read. I had to read it again. Because the format is different than anything I’d read before. So I had to really familiarize myself with it and dig in just so I could understand it. And once I understood it, I was like, Oh yes, I definitely had to be a part of it.”
The Actors Have Moved on To Bigger Things
The movie’s three best and most important performances are those of LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, and Steven Yeun. Since Sorry to Bother You was released, all three have moved to bigger things. For starters, they’ve gone from supporting players in other people’s projects, Stanfield in Atlanta, Thompson in the MCU, and Yeun in The Walking Dead, to leading their own projects. If that wasn’t enough, the projects they’ve chosen to do have been a success with critics and audiences.
Stanfield and Yeun have become Academy Award nominees since this movie was released; Stanfield was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Judas and the Black Messiah, and Yeun was nominated at that very same Academy Award ceremony for Best Actor for Minari. The Walking Dead actor is also having a great start to 2024, as he won every award imaginable for his role in the miniseries Beef. Thompson didn’t get an Academy Award but should’ve for her role in Passing, for which she was BAFTA nominated.
All three can now choose their own projects and green light them with their interest in them, making new films as daring, surprising, and interesting as Sorry to Bother You a viable proposition. Which projects are they doing next that could be as unique as this film? Stanfield will star in Notes from a Young Black Chef, Kwame Onwuachi’s memoir; Thompson will star in Hedda, Nia Dacosta’s reimagining of Ibsen’s renowned play; and Yeun is one of the stars of Mickey 17, Bong Joon Ho (Parasite) newest project.
Director Boots Riley was also given a much wider canvas to paint on with Prime Video’s I’m a Virgo. Much like Sorry to Bother You, the series is a class-conscious deconstruction of the superhero myth that looks to tear down the power fantasy of the rich tech billionaire superheroes like Iron Man, Batman, and Green Arrow. It also got great reviews but seemed to fly under the radar, although it did make MovieWeb’s 15 Best Superhero and Television Shows of 2023. Riley is great filmmaker who we certainly hope to see more of in the future.
Sadly, Its Capitalist Themes Are Aging Too Well
Since the film was released in 2018, there’s been many more strikes in America. Not only for usual suspects like Amazon and Starbucks, but even the movie industry had two of them. Both the writers and actors went on strike in 2023 to get more benefits from the streaming companies while trying to ensure a future where AI isn’t taking their jobs away. With every day that passes, there’s a bigger margin between what billionaires have (and how they treat employees) and the rest of the population who must live while everything is getting pricier (food, housing, gas), except their salaries.
In just the first two months of 2024, various companies have undergone massive, sweeping layoffs. Google, Discord, eBay, Microsoft, Activision, UPS, Zoom, and The LA Times are just a few of the names that have made headlines due to them laying off a number of employees, showing how little companies regard their employees, as was clearly and not subtly spelled out in Sorry to Bother You.
Riley’s film might be the extreme version of those capitalist ideals, as the workers at WorryFree end up pretty much-being slaves, but sadly, its capitalist themes are aging too well. It’s also a perfect reflection of how the worker still has power if they organize and strike, as it has proven time and time again, including in Hollywood this year. It’s also a great way to change one of the meanings of the title as if the workers don’t want to bother anyone, they’ll get treated worse and worse by the people in power who are only looking to earn more money for their shareholders and don’t care about the workers.
With all that in mind, it could be said that Sorry to Bother You was ahead of its time, and the world, and especially America, is going to be having more strikes so that the people who actually do the work get paid deservedly. Maybe the director could do another film about the subject. If it’s half as good as this one, viewers will be there on opening day to watch it.
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