Stepping into the mind of Boots Riley is always a wild and radicalizing ride. The Oakland-based rapper, activist and filmmaker burst onto the Hollywood scene with his scathing, absurdist corporate satire “Sorry To Bother You” in 2018, and his sophomore feature, “I Love Boosters,” is just as wacky, colorful, and galvanizing as his first film, perhaps even more so.

Much has happened since 2018, when Riley took aim at corporate greed and conspiracy at a telemarketing firm, where a young black man uses a “white voice” in order to succeed. There’s been a pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, public sentiment turning against tech oligarchs, and Riley, who joined the Progressive Labor Party at age 15, remains laser-focused on workers, unions and solidarity. In “I Love Boosters,” he takes his message from the local to the global, demonstrating how economically interconnected we all are.

Keke Palmer stars as Corvette, the leader of a group of shoplifters that includes her friends, the pragmatic Sade (Naomi Ackie) and the dreamy Mariah (Taylour Paige). They “boost” luxury clothing and resell it on the black market, while Corvette dreams of becoming a designer herself, idolizing the brilliant-but-quirky fashion mogul Christie Smith (Demi Moore).

But “I Love Boosters” is not the story of Corvette’s ascent into a traditional industry, but of her growing disillusionment with aspirational billionaire idol worship and her awakening to solidarity across borders. The fashion world is the perfect setting for Riley’s tale, both aesthetically and symbolically. The lush, over-the-top costumes by Shirley Kurata are nothing less than high art, and fit perfectly with Riley’s cartoonish, absurdist style. But clothing is also a ubiquitous human necessity in everyday life. And we’re often blind to the conditions under which it is made, as workers in overseas factories crank out merchandise under dangerous conditions.

Clothing and fashion also provide a fascinating symbol for Riley to play with shifting, socially constructed notions of value — items can be stolen, but what about ideas? Why are people (often the upper class) morally offended by the idea of shoplifting but not worker exploitation or the theft of intellectual property? Why are some economic markets socially acceptable and others illegal, and who decides that status anyway? Riley asks us to at least ponder these questions rather than just accepting “the way things are.”

To pull off their biggest heist yet, Corvette and her girls infiltrate the business and get jobs at one of Christie Smith’s retail outposts, where they’re managed by fussy Grayson (Will Poulter) and meet the disgruntled, radical Violeta (Eiza González), who is trying to pull together a strike. But they’re distracted by a new booster on the scene, Jianhu (Poppy Liu), who has popped out of nowhere with a strange new technology on her hands: a portable teleporter. It turns out she’s an emissary from one of Christie’s Chinese clothing factories, where workers are becoming sick from exposure to the chemicals used for denim sandblasting. She and her cousin steal the teleporter, developed for shipping, in order to hurt Christie’s company, holding the clothes hostage, and demanding better worker treatment.

Ergo, “I Love Boosters” is Riley’s “Norma Rae.” It’s also, in a manner of speaking, his “Heat,” combining the heist movie with the union movie in his own crazy signature style. And does it ever get crazy. Like “Sorry To Bother You,” “I Love Boosters” comes dangerously close to careening all the way off the rails at times, especially when Violeta is explaining the properties of the teleporter device—which also deconstructs and accelerates situations—using the philosophy of dialectical materialism (we can have a little Marxism, as a treat). Or, when a group of flesh-exposed bodies, relieved of their skin suits, engage Corvette in a high-speed chase around downtown after the crew disrupts Christie’s fashion show. Whatever Riley’s having, pass it around.

That’s the beauty of Riley’s work: He invites you into his wacky, exhilarating, profane, political carnival where everything has a deeper meaning. Take, for example, Corvette’s real name, Cassandra, the Greek mythological figure whose spoken prophecies are often ignored. In his surrealist modern fables, Riley employs monstrous mythological types, like Lakeith Stanfield’s seducer figure, a demon who literally sucks women dry, a distraction that Corvette has to avoid like an obstacle on her road to enlightenment.

At times, “I Love Boosters” almost loses the plot, and we almost lose a foothold in reality. But the performances are funny and charming, particularly Paige, and Palmer grounds the emotional core of Corvette’s journey. For such heavy political themes and rallying cries to action, Riley makes it wildly entertaining, with eye-popping visuals, and a circus-inspired score by Tune-Yards. What’s most important is that among all the mishaps and misadventures, his message never loses its clarity: Liberation is for everyone, and, most importantly, it should be fun.

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‘I LOVE BOOSTERS’

3 1/2 stars out of 4

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, language throughout and brief drug use.

Where to watch: in theaters Friday

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