Review of Sorry to Bother You (2018) by Shawn S — 22 Jul 2018

The escalating theory of comedy. This is a story that follows Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield). Money is tight, so he gets a job in a telemarketing call center. When he manages to be extremely successful at it, he may have a chance at having a life changing promotion: becoming a power caller.

Now as soon as I heard about this, it quickly rose the ranks to the top of my watchlist. The trailers looked fabulous, and it stars Lakeith Stanfield, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors out there.

Between this, Get Out and the television series Atlanta, he is developing quite the track record. Also, I personally have a call center background myself (just got out after a six year stint), so really, that was all I needed to be sold.

This isn't a movie I would necessarily recommend to everybody, but if you like your movies innovative, this needs to be on your radar. This movie is what it is being sold as, but at the same time, it is also not.

It's not like the scenes in the trailer aren't in movie or anything, as they are present and work as effectively as you would think. This movie just has more social commentary than you probably expect.

Director Boots Riley clearly has a lot to say about race relations, employment opportunities and wealth distribution, and 99% of the time, your garden variety comedy isn't going to have something important to say like this does here.

Most people out there have worked a crappy job at some point, and on top of that, there is a decent chance you've worked in a position where you primarily talk to customers over the phone. Sorry to Bother You captures what struggling with poverty is all about, and it makes a lot of great points on labor in a corporation.

The company WorryFree seems like a potential direction a behemoth like Amazon could go in about a decade, and Armie Hammer positively kill it playing a Jeff Bezos esque character. When he shows up, you are left with no choice other than to be surprised.

I refuse to spoil that moment, because it comes right around the beginning of the third act, but I will say that this is the precise moment where this film kicks into high gear. This is a very surreal comedy that isn't afraid to get weird.

You get to see so many strange happenings that you are sometimes unclear on if you are witnessing something that is real or if it is only going on in the main character's heads. There's not a weak actor in the bunch, and I especially liked the unseen David Cross as the white voice of the Cassius; whenever he talked, I audibly laughed every single time.

If you want to see something you haven't seen before, Sorry to Bother You is most definitely the way to go.