<em>Sorry to Bother You</em> Is a Dystopian Send-Up of Dystopias

Speculative fiction must speculate. It’s in the name, of course. While idyllic utopias have had their place under the sun in science-fiction and fantasy media, it’s dystopias that are having their day, with their central premise imagining that sociopolitical currents today will lead to disaster tomorrow. In an age that sees people shaped by anxiety about annihilation (among other things), the dystopia has become a modern standard, a collective of uneasy musings about the soured nature of human society that employs both dour predictions and biting satire in its doomsaying.  

, the debut film from the musician Boots Riley, faces the difficult task of puncturing the ever more absurd heights of real-life oppression and inequality in America. , Riley mostly succeeds. “The film perhaps tries to tackle too much in its 105-minute running tries to tackle too much might even be an understatement; it’s a freewheeling critique ranging from Oakland’s creeping hyper-gentrification to the exploitation of labor to a –meets– riff on race and tokenism. It’s less a surgical satire of something being wrong than a man on the corner, waving wild-eyed and shouting that is.