When a young black man gets a job as a telemarketer in current-day Oakland, he soon realizes he can make more people listen to him and make more sales when he uses his artificial “white” voice. Once our protagonist cracks this code, he becomes much more successful and moves up the ladder from tiny cubicles and tinier paychecks to secret passcodes and an exclusive elevator to the higher floor.
But, of course, with success comes a sobering introduction to quirky new examples of racism, income inequality, and even slavery which force our leading man to choose between living the easy way or living the right way.
This movie is completely insane and bizarrely original. It offers so much fun, off-beat comedy dissecting the social commentary of 20-something people trying to make ends meet in contemporary city life. So it was a lot of fun. Does the director/writer Boots Riley throw too many ideas into the mix? Yes. And it gets too crazy toward the end. But this film is still enjoyable to watch. And Sorry to Bother You is hopefully the beginning of introducing great, black-centered stories coming out of independent filmmakers this summer.
Overall, I’m on the fence about this film. Sometimes a film can suffer from too much creativity. But there were parts I liked.
