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After all, paying his overdue rent-he lives in his uncle’s (Terry Crews) garage-seems more important to Cassius than pledging allegiance to any cause.Īfter getting a job at a telemarketing firm, RegalView, Cassius is quickly thrust to the top of the pecking order by adhering to the company’s motto: “Stick to the script.” And part of that script includes using his “white voice” on the phone with customers as he tries to sell them encyclopedias, oblivious that what he’s really hawking is Worry Free’s slave labor. (Cassius, though, is very much himself on the outside whenever he-in an inspired visual motif-literally drops into people’s homes whenever he’s on the phone with a potential client.) That’s another one of Sorry to Bother You’s great gags: the sight of Cassius and a fellow black telemarketer, Langston (Danny Glover), opening their mouths and their words coming out in nasally, distinctly white voices (provided by comedians David Cross and Patton Oswalt).

This is a flip on the hostage scenario at the heart of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, where Stanfield’s character sees his black body literally held hostage by a community of white liberals. The difference here is that Cassius is his own captor.

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Riley wants us to recognize-then laugh at-the fundamental absurdity of how code switching has become an innate survival tactic for people of color, for whom not talking white enough, or not having a white enough name, possibly means not being able to compete for the same piece of the pie. Riley’s belief in laughter paving the way for sanity is energizing, and his film’s wild digressions are poignantly in sync with the fundamental unpredictability-or, rather, insanity-of present-day America. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU CODEįor talking white and boosting RegalView’s commissions, Cassius is rewarded first with an office in the top floor of the building-which can only be reached by inputting what is safe to say is the longest elevator code in the history of the world-and then with a swanky apartment that would seem to put a permanent wedge between him and Detroit.

She believes that he’s benefiting from a system of exploitation, while Cassius seems to feel that he’s gotten his due, which is why when his co-workers start picketing against RegalView, his only worry is making sure he gets to the other side of the picket line without spilling any more blood.īut by the time Cassius worms his way back to the top of his ivory tower, the world of Sorry to Bother You already feels as if it’s been transformed into a metaphysical disaster zone from which it’s difficult to imagine anyone on either side of the film’s class and race war emerging in one piece. And it’s around here, as it flings itself into the dominion of sci-fi, that this wild and often funny film-so unmistakably alive to the humiliations of the social systems that keep the lower classes in their place-loses something. Some of Riley’s best jokes are beaten into the ground, and those that aren’t particularly pointed in the first place are fired off with a desperation that only amplifies the sense that Riley is making things up as he goes along. In one scene, Detroit is inexplicably seen working at RegalView.