Anthony's Film Review - Sorry to Bother You (2018)

This comedy ultimately delivers biting satire, regardless of how wacky it gets...

Sorry to Bother You is a movie that I would describe as a dark satirical comedy. It delivers humor that is often related to certain unpleasant topics, for the purpose of poking fun at a societal issue. Here, the target is class warfare. That's something that many of us can relate to based on experience or observation. The idea that the poor are being oppressed and the rich are raking in all the benefits is nothing new. It's still happening today as we speak. While this film wouldn't stand out for the topic it focuses on, it does stand out for the unique wacky manner in which it tells the story.

Lakeith Stanfield plays Cassius Green, an African-American man who applies for a job as a telemarketer with RegalView Telemarketing in Oakland, California. He's just a guy who is poor and in desperate need of employment, so much so that he comes in with falsified qualifications and references. He manages to get the job, but that's only the beginning. The job itself is miserable. Bottom line: being a telemarketer sucks. Nobody wants to receive an unsolicited phone call from a salesperson peddling a product or service that the call recipient never looked into in the first place. On top of that, the pay and benefits are minimal, maybe substandard. The latter is why one co-worker, an Asian dude who calls himself Squeeze (played by Steven Yeun), decides to organize a telemarketers union and plan a strike.

Certainly, you have a story that provides the satire. But you also have a few gags that add to the humor. For example, whenever Cassius is making a telemarketing call, he imagines himself, along with his desk, being transported into the room where the telemarketing client answers the phone, so that the telephone conversation is presented as a face-to-face interaction. Such scenes can be funny depending on what the client is doing at the time, including things that are kept private from public viewing. Then there is the secret to telemarketing success that Cassius comes across. If he wants to be taken seriously over the phone, and capture the admiration of management, he has to NOT sound like an African-American man on the phone. It is funny that this involves dubbing a different actor's voice (in this case, David Cross's voice) on top of Lakeith Stanfield's lip movements.

The story does get interesting. Just as the telemarketer strike is underway, Cassius successfully gets promoted to a high-level telemarketer who has way more benefits than the colleagues he left behind. This is an opportunity for Cassius to really see what goes on at the top. The things that he sees also illustrate the class warfare theme, and they seem exaggerated yet true to life. This is also the part of the movie where we in the audience wonder what choice Cassius will make. Will he sell out his girlfriend and his friends for personal wealth? Or will he take a stand against excessive corporate power?

And this is where the movie will surely divide the audience. This movie is also classified as science-fiction, because of a certain revelation late in the movie that will really clash and seem out of place with the reality-based comedy taking place so far. How you will react to this will depend on how much of an open mind you have. If you expect a certain type of movie to follow specific conventions or play out in particular ways, you will likely be disgusted by the last part of the movie. In contrast, if you free your mind of all expectations and let yourself be taken along for the ride, even if the film makes a highly unusual move, you may like it. For me, I did admire what I saw, as weird as I agree it is.

Here's another way to look at it. Genre-switching is a very uncommon cinematic practice and often irritates the audience. One example I recall is the 1996 movie From Dusk to Dawn, which starts out as a crime drama starring George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino and eventually changes into an action horror flick with the same characters killing vampires. I did not like that movie because the second genre completely disregards the first one from the beginning. In contrast, I did not have a problem with Sorry to Bother You introducing a sci-fi element because it is still related to the story from the beginning and to the topic of class warfare. Plus, if you think about it, the weirdness of the sci-fi part can be funny when you consider that virtually nobody expects it.

So the title of this movie can be seen in one of two ways. People who dislike this movie will see the title as a message from the filmmakers about the weird sci-fi element thrown in, like, "Sorry to bother you, but this movie's genre has suddenly changed." For people who like this movie, me included, the title is a funny reminder of the telemarketer's job and the inconveniences of being poor and struggling to make it. I commend director Boots Riley for daring to be funny and bizarre at the same time. After all, we do need weirdness now and then in order to force us to do things in new ways. So to him, I say good job for being both creative and bizarre, and there's no need to apologize for that.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about Sorry to Bother You, visit the Internet Movie Database.