Keke Palmer and Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters turns a shoplifting caper into a sharper kind of hope
keke palmer is at the center of a new crime comedy that opens on a vivid, unruly premise: a team of shoplifters targeting a ruthless fashion heavyweight. The film, I Love Boosters, has already drawn strong early reactions after its debut at SXSW in March, and it is set to open in theaters on May 22.
What is I Love Boosters about?
The film follows a crew built around theft, style, and confrontation with power, but the response to it has focused on more than the plot. Boots Riley wrote and directed the movie, and the early conversation around it describes a work that is maximalist, strange, and deliberately overstuffed with ideas. One review called it social commentary delivered with anime action and colourful high strangeness.
That mix matters because I Love Boosters is not being framed as a simple comedy. It is being read as a film that pushes at the edges of genre while still trying to say something direct about life under extreme capitalism. In that sense, the movie’s premise is built for both spectacle and argument, with keke palmer helping anchor the emotional core of the story.
Why are the early reviews so strong?
The film has a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 31 reviews at the time of this article’s composition. That number may change as the release date approaches and more reviews are added, but the current critical response is clearly positive. Several reviewers praised the film’s energy and its sense of purpose, even when they noted that it can feel unruly or intentionally off-balance.
Joe Gross of The Austin Chronicle highlighted Boots Riley’s optimism and wrote that the film maintains an inspired belief in the power of community and the contradictory realities of life under extreme capitalism. Rachel Leishman of The Mary Sue described the movie as weird, out there, and outrageous, while noting that there is more to it than its chaos. Glenn Garner of Deadline praised Riley’s stylized take on modern society and said that Palmer’s performance grounds the writing in real-world implications. Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter called the film a strange but hopeful mirror held up to our own world.
The overall picture is of a movie that is not trying to blend in. It leans into absurdity while still asking the audience to see familiar pressures more clearly. That balance may explain why the response has been so strong: the film sounds wild, but not empty.
How does Keke Palmer fit into the film’s wider appeal?
The cast helps widen the film’s reach without changing its strange center. Alongside keke palmer, the movie includes Don Cheadle, Will Poulter, Naomi Ackie, Demi Moore, Eric André, Adam DeVine, and Eiza González. The presence of several Marvel stars has been part of the attention around the film, but the early reviews suggest that the ensemble is being used to support Boots Riley’s larger vision rather than soften it.
Palmer’s role appears especially important because the reviews singled out how her performance helps ground the film. That matters in a story this bold, where the energy could easily tip into pure chaos. Instead, the response suggests that the film has a human center strong enough to hold its more theatrical choices together.
What happens next for the movie?
I Love Boosters premiered at SXSW on March 12, 2026, and it is scheduled to debut in US theaters on May 22, 2026. That theatrical release will be the next test of whether the film’s early critical momentum carries beyond festival audiences. For now, the movie stands as a striking return for Boots Riley after Sorry to Bother You, and as another high-profile turn for keke palmer in a film that wants to be both entertaining and politically charged.
The opening shoplifting setup still feels like the right image for the whole project: people moving through a system built to look polished while they quietly challenge it from inside. In I Love Boosters, that tension seems to be the point, and it is what gives keke palmer’s latest role its weight. The question now is whether theater audiences will see the same mix of chaos, community, and hope that the early reviews already find there.
