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In "Sorry to Bother You," Lakeith Stanfield plays Cassius Green, a financially strapped young man living in a semi-futuristic version of Oakland, where he bunks down in his cousin's garage with his girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), an artist with a fiery sense of irony and a penchant for provocative earrings.
As "Sorry to Bother You" opens, Cassius is trying to increase his fortunes, interviewing at a telemarketing company called RegalView, where he has brought along with an employee -of-the-month plate and a dusty trophy from earlier days as references. The manager is in the lapse of the road, with the words Cassius, he is exactly what he is looking for. "
-success, at least ounce he's advised by a wise colleague (played by Danny Glover) to use his "white voice" when calling anonymous strangers. "And not Will Smith-white," the older man intones. Instead, he says, affect the voice patina of privilege and entitlement that makes it sound as if "you do not have a care in the world."
Written and directed by hip-hop Riley Boots in an auspicious but self -defeatingly anarchic debut, "Sorry to Bother You" Cassius' tracks ascent through the corporate ranks, the zenith of which is a company called WorryFree, which sells people the fantasy of complete security, both in work and housing. Led by a coke-snorting named Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), WorryFree lives up to its name in its idealized TV ads, but through another lens it looks a lot like modern-day slavery: While Cassius grapples with the ethical implications of improving his lot – is it success or self-betrayal? – he begins to alienate Detroit and his workplace friends, who have started to organize a union.
Stanfield will be familiar with his view of his role on "Atlanta" last year's breakout horror hit "Get Out," to which "Sorry to Bother You" bears more than a passing resemblance. As in that movie, Riley uses today's alternate universe to explore themes of assimilation, selling out, and cultural appropriation (a scene when Cassius "raps" for a decadent, mostly-white party is one of the most vividly effective films). And it's a masterful study of code-switching, the linguistic practice of tailoring different vocal cadences, accents and dialects to one's audience. In "Sorry to Bother You," Riley underscores the psychic doubling that of the dudes of contemporary actors, who here include David Cross and Patton Oswalt.
It's a jarring goal amusing conceit, and much of "Sorry to Bother You "possesses similarly on-point jokes; the film is a fluid, peripatetic montage of set pieces, visual gags and ingeniously conceived stunts that are utterly of a piece with Cassius' own tortured relationship to mobility within white-dominated social spaces. Early in the movie, when he's cold-calling clients, Riley confects to have him drop into the homes he's calling, interrupting people's dinners and lovemaking; When it reaches the big time, the executive elevator is in the presence of the absurdly long security code.
In many ways, "Sorry to Bother You" seems inspired by Mike Judge at his most antic and deadpan, especially his management and political satires "Office Space" and "Idiocracy." But as Cassius moves between the ever-multiplying worlds that make up his personal universe – the dronelike hive of RegalView, Detroit's edgy art studio, Lift's bacchanalian lair, a new minimalist-chic apartment – Riley's control over his own material begins to falter. This is a movie of myriad worthy, even urgently necessary, ideas; when it reaches its climax, it goes completely haywire in a preposterous, more scattershot sci-fi pastiche.
That development will either delight audiences or alienate them, depending on their taste for self-consciously outrageous pulp. But even if it does not, it does not succeed to a coherent movie, it does not succeed, and it does not succeed to succeed. What's more, it offers a showcase for Stanfield, who is that rare actor who can almost immediately earn the audience's sympathy, his hooded, hunched reticence conveying both hard-won mistrust and vulnerability.
Supported by the likes of Thompson, Glover , Hammer, Omari Hardwick, Steven Yeun and a host of maybe-recognizable voice actors, Stanfield anchors a film that is brims with energy, inventiveness and the sharply honed contempt of an acute observing of contemporary life. Riley steeps his movie in the traditions of black intellectualism, critical capitalist and political theory, infusing "Sorry to Bother You" with both high-toned ideas and midnight-movie silliness at its most brazen and unruly. The film's final-final ending might be too much pessimistic, but "Sorry to Bother You" might be more precise than an impassioned, chaotically accurate response to dark and troubling times. After all, few can credibly argue that cash is green, even when it's covered in blood.
'Sorry To Bother You'
Two and a half stars out of four. Rated R. Contains Pervasive Crude Tongue, Some Strong Sexual Material, Graphic Nudity and Drug Use. 107 minutes.
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