Sorry to Bother You poster

“Let me give you a tip. You wanna make some money here? Use your white voice.”

Langston

An off-beat comedy about white privilege, worker exploitation and personal greed, Sorry to Bother You is the impressive debut feature from writer/director Boots Riley, and stars the excellent LaKeith Stanfield (of Atlanta fame). Riley’s approach to unsettling the audience through the black perspective of navigating social interaction is reminiscent of Get Out, though he also channels Michel Gondry in his loose approach to realism, overtly referencing the director in a stop-motion animated sequence. It is the absurdist notes — like the fact that the “white voice” which propels Cassius’ career is not simply a posh accent spoken by Stanfield but is very obviously dubbed (by David Cross) — which demonstrate Riley’s unique voice as a film maker but arguably distract from Sorry to Bother You’s core messages.

7/10