Sorry To Bother You Review

I have been so excited for this movie for such a long time. It's one of those movies where you see the trailer and know that it's either going to be best or worst movie ever. I saw that it was sitting at around a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, and knew that it would be worth my time. Aside from the RT score, I have intentionally stayed away from any discourse surrounding the film so that I could go into it with a completely open mind.

To put it simply, I was a lot more excited going into Sorry To Bother You than I was going out. I really wanted to love it and feel impacted by it, but that just wasn't the case. I totally understand that this is supposed to be a thought-provoking movie with commentary on a multitude of social issues, but there were just a lot of issues with the plot that really watered down the social commentary. 

I know that this is Boots Riley's directorial debut, and from a visual standpoint, there are a lot of cool things done here. Using Detroit's earrings to add to the communication of scenes was a really cool touch. The montage of stop-motion showing Cassius's come-up was awesome. However, it felt like Riley had a lot of ideas that he wanted to put into movies, and he decided to put them all into the same movie. This was especially true with jokes - there were a couple that were funny, but just didn't have a place/add anything to this movie. 

When I think about the the scenes/elements of this movie that I really liked, I seem to always be reminded of an element of the scene that added absolutely nothing to the movie. Did Detroit and Squeeze's romantic involvement really change anything about the movie? The high school football team concept was really funny, but where did that fit into this story about an uprising against capitalism? The movie is laden with tidbits like this that could be great in the right context, but this certainly didn't seem to be that. I honestly think Riley could've made 2-3 more-focused movies using elements of Sorry to Bother You that would've been more successful than the scattered nature of this one. 

As badly as I wanted to be preoccupied and moved by this movie the way that I was with something like Get Out or A Quiet Place, this was a case where it was clear that making a movie that's "different" isn't the same as making a movie that's special. Ultimately, it felt like a movie that had several good concepts, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts, and it will be easily forgotten in time by myself and many others.