I don’t use the phrase batshit very often, and usually only in reference to shit made by bats. That’s because I spend a lot of time in the Garrison underpass where there is a lot of batshit. And bats. So, a typical thing I might say about batshit is, “God damnit, that batshit just dripped into my watermelon Four Loko. Oh, well.” Or, “I just sat in batshit.” Or, “If you guys make me eat batshit again I’m going to tell your moms.”
Sorry to Bother You is batshit, but the other kind, as in crazy nuts. That’s okay. I much prefer crazy batshit to literal batshit. It’s easier to wash out of your clothes. And there is something exciting about watching an unrestrained movie, one that projectile vomits fresh ideas and jokes onto the big screen. This is especially true when the typical movie experience is becoming increasingly sanitized and safe, as much created by the marketing department as the filmmakers and only giving the audience as little new materials as possible as a come on for yet another movie. While Hollywood has become a cocktease, Sorry to Bother You actually fucks.
Sorry to Bother You feels like a singular vision, a first-time writer-director named Boots Riley purging his brain, puking every last fucking thing inside him onto the screen. <aside>Boots Riley is a fucking cool name, and I am going to call him Boots, because that’s what you do for a guy with that name. <aside> Maybe Boots was worried he’d never get another chance to make a movie, or maybe his brain is like the porta-pottie at a beer festival, filling up so fast it overflows every few hours. Either way, he goes for it.
Think of Eraserhead or Donnie Darko. Or maybe Hollywood Shuffle. Think of movies that went from brain to screen without the all the corporate filters and interference. But also without the filters of any sane person saying, “Whoa, slow down.” Like the cinematic equivalent of homemade kombucha, maybe the result will be amazing, or maybe you will die from salmonella. Sorry to Bother You falls somewhere in between. As an idea generator, this movie is pretty fucking fantastic. As a narrative movie with a point, what a fucking mess.
Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield) wonders what his special purpose is. Why the fuck is he on this planet, other than to just survive? It’s a good question and I hope everyone asks it of themselves. Although, when I go to the new Walmart to put my boogers on the rifles, I get the sense most people never get that philosophical. Not when you can get 42 ounces of Cheetos for four bucks. The more pressing issue for Cassius than being important, though, is surviving: eating, paying rent, affording more than 40 cents worth of gas.
He finagles his way into a job as a telemarketer, about as overripe a target for skewering as I can imagine. Special purpose will have to wait for later. The twist is that Cassius fails when he uses his black voice, and has unbelievable success when using a white voice.
This is a funny idea, and a great jumping off point for a whole monologue about white assimilation and the hoops the people in power expect those not like them to jump through. I could see a whole movie stemming from this, and Cassius struggle with staying true to himself or at least avoiding being consumed.
Two things, though: He finagles his way into the job through some mischievous lies like bringing fake debate team trophies to his interview. We don’t see that clever side of Cassius again in the movie. That sucks. That Cassius was funny, and the sort of guy who could subvert shit from the inside. But the one we get sort of sleep walks through the movie, an empty, if likeable, center. Also, if a white voice is all you need to succeed in telemarketing, why are all the white people in the boiler room not killing it? Do you need a white voice but some other intangible only a black person has? Nappy hair?
Cassius is so successful selling shitty products to schlubs that he gets promoted to “powerseller” where he is required to sell questionable products to executives. Shit like arms to dictators or slave labor to Chinese factories. There should be a deeper moral quandary here. Cassius is far too compliant and inert for most of the movie. He just goes along with it all, so I never got the sense he was still looking for his special purpose. He just became a vehicle for Boots to cram concepts into the movie.
Among those concepts are a company promising people lifetime job contracts: security traded for freedom. In other words, indentured servitude. Also, one of Cassius’s coworkers (Steve Yeun) wants to unionize the telemarketers and strike against the shitty working conditions. Oh, and also, Yeun is angling to bang Cassius’s performance art girlfriend (Tessa Thompson) like a bongo. The girlfriend, in one unhinged scene, stands on a stage in an art gallery quoting movie dialog while being pelted with cell phones and sheep’s blood.
Sheep’s blood? You ask. That sounds integral to the plot. Yeah, well, no, it’s not. It’s just a concept.
The deeper Casius gets into the powerseller world, the more he realizes how fucking corrupt it is. But he is also getting paid more and more money. Boots is trying to say something about the eternal dilemma: how much is your soul worth? For me, I have no idea. I tell myself every day that I will never, ever sell out my ideals. Unless the opportunity presents itself. Will someone please make me an offer.
Boots was originally trying to say something about white assimilation, the reality that almost all power in this country is held by white people who are most comfortable around other white people. Or, people of other colors who will behave white. So fucking many of our problems are because scared, old white men want everyone to behave according to their standards. They don’t want to be subjected to things they don’t understand. It reminds them that they are out of touch and going to die, and the world will evolve beyond their love of golf and money. There are so many concepts that are worthy of a good story. Sorry to Bother You isn’t it, though. It’s too batshit for its own good. And I didn’t even tell you about the half-horse/half-humans, the subplot about a video of Cassius getting hit on the head turning into a viral sensation, the eyepatched guy with no name and the Claymation movie inside the movie. Like I said, batshit. But not satisfying. Two Fingers.