Sorry To Bother You is the kind of indie success story that doesn’t come along too often. Getting its premiere at Sundance back in January, the film got the kind of reviews that have kept people talking about it ever since – and when it opened on just 16 screens in the US this summer, it sold out every seat and immediately got bumped up to a proper nationwide release, where it made the kind of money that other absurdist social comedies about telesales only dream of.
Directed by Boots Riley (lead singer of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club), and starring Atlanta’s Lakeith Stanfield, Sorry To Bother You looks downright weird and utterly brilliant.
Sounding like something out of Black Mirror, the film is a sort of sci-fi set in an alt-present LA, where a young African American (Stanfield) answers an ad for a firm that offers a lifetime of free food, bills and lodging in return for a lifetime of telesales work. The slavery metaphor is an obvious one, but the social commentary gets weird when Stanfield’s character works out he can make more money by answering the phone in his “white voice” (David Cross).
Throw in Tessa Thompson as his girlfriend (with Lily James as her own “white voice”), Terry Crews as his uncle, Armie Hammer as his boss and Riley’s very Michel Gondry-esque brand of visual flair, and you’ve got a pretty unique, important, gloriously odd looking indie comedy.
Sorry To Bother You (finally) opens in the UK on December 7th.