The past few years have taught a lot of Americans about the levers of capitalism that have exploited the working class since the dawn of time. The idea of hard work being all you need for success is practically the stuff of fairy tales. People have caught on to the reality that billionaires rarely achieve such status by playing by the rules.

Boots Riley’s absurdist crime comedy I Love Boosters takes aim at the business practices of the fashion industry. Corvette (Keke Palmer), Sade (Naomi Ackie), and Mariah (Taylour Paige) are three “boosters,” people who shoplift high-end clothing to resell at a discount on the black market. Living out of a closed-down fast-food chicken restaurant, their favorite target is the Metro Designers chain, owned by Christie Smith (Demi Moore), an idol of Corvette’s.

Christie, an outspoken personality on social media, exploits her workers both domestically and abroad. Metro Designers specializes in monochrome collections, which store employees are expected to purchase for themselves each season when the stores completely rebrand to a new color. Working conditions at her Chinese sweatshop are inhumane. One of the workers, Jianhu (Poppy Liu) started raiding Metro Designers’ shops after her aunt died and her mother got cancer from the sandblasting at Christie’s shops.

Riley’s work reaches new levels of surrealism when the Boosters team up with Jianhu, who is armed with a portable transportation device that’s also capable of deconstruction and situational acceleration, riffing on Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism. The transporter devices are quite amusing, if not a little stifling amidst everything else going on. When it’s not busy diving into heavy Marxism, the narrative makes space for more surface-level critiques in the form of Dr. Jack (Don Cheadle), who runs a classic pyramid scheme called Friends being Friendly.

There is a lot going on in I Love Boosters. Riley’s attention to style is perpetually on display, particularly the set design. Christie’s office, built on an incline, helps set the tone for the film’s lack of subtlety. The score, performed by Tune-Yards, operates on the same wavelength as Riley’s frantic sense of pacing.

The three leading women have a natural sense of chemistry. We don’t learn a ton about any of them as people. Corvette gets the most character development, especially opposite a mysterious man with a pinky ring (LaKeith Stanfield) but Riley is pretty content to let things play out as a fairly standard revenge piece.  Moore and Cheadle showed up to play, while Will Poulter shines in a bit role as one of the store managers. Paige is the real comedic standout, constantly eliciting laughs through Mariah’s antics.

Riley’s worldbuilding is the key to the film’s success. Everything feels lived-in, fostering an inclusive atmosphere for the narrative’s ample humor. The dramatic tension rarely lets up, an exhausting 113-minute runtime that could probably have shaved ten minutes off.

The film wears its anti-capitalist message on its sleeve, but the substance of the story doesn’t go much deeper. There’s too much going on for Riley to really thoroughly explore any of his themes. Cheadle’s storyline doesn’t really receive enough attention to justify its place in the narrative.

Capitalism itself largely relies on people being too overwhelmed to process all of life’s own whiplash. Riley takes a lot of big swings with I Love Boosters. They don’t all land perfectly, but the space he created is so much fun to spend time in. The arts as a whole would be a lot healthier if more artists were given space to work their own magic like Riley.