This Is The Game We Play | [Spoiler] Review - Sorry to Bother You

As the string of company names that funded this movie flashes across the screen, there comes a line of text that reads, ‘A Significant Production.’ This, friends, is an incredible understatement. Sorry to Bother You is a working-class comedy set firmly in this era of history, when wage disparity has seldom been more severe. It’s a genre film disguised by social commentary, sometimes unclear, but always fun.

The movie opens in Oakland, California where Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) has been given a job at RegalView as a telemarketer. Good news for him, as he and his fiancée Detroit (Tessa Thompson) are living in his uncle’s garage with several dollars collectively to their name. Cash struggles at his new job until he is given advice by a veteran of the call center, Langston (Danny Glover), to make himself as friendly and non-threatening as possible. How? By using his “White Voice” of course. This voice (dubbed over by David Cross) is more than just a simple inflection; Cash turns himself into another person entirely as he’s physically dropped, desk and all, into his clients’ homes and elsewhere.

Cash is a natural at the White Voice. He’s so good that he’s landed himself a promotion in a few short months. His character is tested, however, as his fellow workers attempt to organize a union in the call center to receive a fair cut of company revenue. Cash joins them at first, but his family’s need for financial reprieve and his own poverty, makes the decision a hard one to make. A difficult position made more difficult by the fact that RegalView is owned by WorryFree: a company that provides food and housing to its workers in exchange for a lifetime labor contract.

This film made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival, so even when I didn’t know what was in it, I knew what it was about. Outlets have compared it to last year’s Oscar-winner (the best horror feature in a decade) Get Out. This movie, Sorry to Bother You is thematically comparable in…one scene? Aesthetically, which is what matters here, the two couldn’t be more different. I described this movie to someone as one part Do the Right Thing, and one part “Teddy Perkins” of Atlanta fame.

The “Teddy Perkins” episode is eerily similar in the way it progresses. It starts with a character coming across an offbeat scenario that is unsettling but not immediately harmful. The situation craters, of course, but we’re never given the impression that it’s time to jet until it’s far too late. The movie hints at this early with Cash’s physical displacement during his calls, then makes the full turn into the absurd in the Third Act, as we peek into the life and mind of Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), the CEO of WorryFree.

Steve himself is worry free, with a closet full of sarongs and more money than he can spend. He is a charismatic Tech Bro abomination, clearly the antagonist, but hardly a villain. In a particularly tense exchange with Cash, he attempts to diffuse the situation by claiming that he isn’t evil. For the most part, he’s right; at least, he genuinely believes he isn’t evil. He does evil things. He’s ruthless in his business strategy. Yet, he actually believes normal people want a [REDACTED] and would sign away their life for [REDACTED]. Sociopaths do only what they know must be done.

This is one of the few places I’d tweak this movie that I otherwise enjoyed greatly. The proposition Cash is given, so late into the game, is so ludicrous and twisted and evil (rightfully so, for a satire), it dampens the heat that had been building steadily throughout the entire sequence in Steve’s mansion.

The second strike for example is an excellent scene because it presents the action of Cash crossing the picket line in pure economic terms instead of merely racial ones. His uncle Sergio was prepared to sign himself into slavery to save his family’s house. Cash takes the job as a Power Caller because he simply has to. His best friend Sal (Jermaine Fowler) says, “Sorry about your Uncle, but…” except there is no but. The “but” is that a man and his wife and kids are out on the street. Selling out was a dubious decision but, in this case at least, it was the adult one.

It would mean more for Cash’s character in the later moment with Steve Lift to be given a choice that trends closer to his actual wants and desires. On that note, it would help if his indecision wasn’t seemingly triggered mainly by his desire to get back together with his activist girlfriend. Detroit begins the movie as the token supportive girlfriend but comes into her own as the film goes on as a loud voice of reason in the midst of utter chaos. Steven Yeun, one of the best young guys working right now, is in my opinion under-utilized as Squeeze, the initial organizer. He gets the most out of very short windows of screen time but bounces back-and-forth from fiery community organizer to pseudo-woke thirst boy at several points.

No one human being needs the amount of money Cash is offered by Steve. That may as well be the thesis of this entire movie: a super-liberal, socialist war cry. If that’s not your jam, you’ve been warned. Writer-Director Boots Riley leaves no wiggle room to misinterpret his message. The hoarders of wealth must pay their due and not a cent less.

The best movies are the ones that elicit a reaction: a real reaction in the cinema. Nightcrawler to this day is one of the best movies I’ve seen in theaters. Not because it was the best movie I’ve seen, but because there was a tangible, emotional reaction from the people in the screening. Raw and visceral not unlike the movie itself. Sorry to Bother You held that same power and that alone makes it one of the best of the year.

The humor is uneven here. Most of it works well. Other times it falls flat, or goes on too long. The script could use a punch up but is still quite strong. We are at an age finally where more than one Black writer at a time can tell the story they’ve always meant to tell and do so creatively unimpeded. People are hungry for these stories that seem to, at long last, be getting the financial backing they need to be seen. We’ll be talking about this movie for a long time yet. It’s sometimes confusing, but never boring, which is what a good film should aspire to.

4 Stars out of 5

The hook of this movie – the secret behind WorryFree’s massive success and Steve Lift’s extravagant wealth – is slave labor. People working endless hours for little pay in inhumane conditions. Sound familiar? Humans have their limits of course, so Steve concocts a plan to increase production by harvesting a warehouse full of mutated horse-human hybrids called Equisapiens. Think of the Replicants of Blade Runner fame.

When Cash goes public with this information, Steve Lift is hailed as a genius. His company’s stock skyrockets and he becomes even more wealthy than he was before. It’s a slick little piece of commentary on how complacent society is with even the most horrific circumstances so long as our daily lives aren’t intruded.

The movie ends with a shot of Cassius in the beginning stages of mutation, having earlier on ingested an activator he was led to believe was cocaine. This is top tier, expert-level dark comedy. It’s a twist ripped straight from a Grimm Fairy Tale or an episode of The Twilight Zone that makes me wonder who the movie is for. The mid-credits stinger where Cash and a band of Equisapiens storm Steve Lift’s gated house (“Sorry to bother you…”) is a literal interpretation of the ‘Eat the Rich’ bumper sticker. Ending the movie with the shot of Cash closing the garage door on the new version of his old life would have been cool, as it depicts a realistic conclusion to this surreal experience.

Steve gets away with slavery, but, the call center gets its union started. Everyone gets paid their due, and Cash gets to start his life with Detroit proper. Episodes of The Boondocks always ended this way: a return to the status quo, with a slightly improved situation and little to no comeuppance for the supposed Bad Guy. Just like real life! The movie isn’t quite set in real life, though, and the route Boots Riley chose is more memorable, so it works just as well.

Stray Thoughts:

- I wanted to see more of Kate Berlant’s middle management character, Diana. The shot in which she makes her exit from the story suggests they had more footage of her. She’s an improv comic and it showed. A charming, energetic performance.

- Armie Hammer is better than he’s given credit for and it’s good he’s found a role that shows that.

- A mangled rhino’s head sits above Steve’s fireplace as a trophy. Poaching, not baseball, is the Rich Caucasian’s favorite pastime.

- Power Callers at RegalView make arms deals. The movie should be longer if only to pick that thread further. Including pointing out the United States and their habit of lending rocket launchers to insurgents abroad.

- One of Cash’s first sales using his White Voice is to a young professional living in downtown Oakland who buys several pieces of expensive furniture. We see him again later. He’s still in downtown Oakland, but he’s living in his car instead of a loft. Brilliant sight gag.

- I’d like to see Donald Glover take a red pen to the second half of this movie and see just how far he takes it.

- The scene in Steve's mansion where Cash is pressured to "rap" in front of the party guests brings to mind the five year period where every party I attended played "Cupid's Shuffle" and every person in attendance looked to me to get the dance started. Nevermind the instructions are in the song. Allow me to jive for you, fellow kids.