Boots Riley is arguably the most impressive cinematic maximalist making American movies in the here and now. It’s not as if there are no other directors who lather the screen with bold, striking visuals or dump a junk drawer’s assemblage of hot takes into their narratives. I would argue, however, that none of them approach the task with quite the same sense of camaraderie with the audience that is evident in Riley’s work. He’s not showing off. He’s there to revel with all invitees in his raucous celebration of ideas.

Riley’s sophomore feature, I Love Boosters, is set in San Francisco and Oakland in a smartly satirical version of our wounded modern society. Corvette (Keke Palmer) is the ringleader of a group of women whose method of surviving late-stage capitalism relies upon shoplifting designer clothes that they resell for well under wholesale cost in amateur pop-up shops. Part of Corvette’s motivation stems from a the stew of envy, animosity, and admiration she feels for Christie Smith (Demi Moore), a successful, imperiously self-confident designer with a chain of stores monochromatically decked out in primary colors. The crew’s mission is given a dose of righteousness when they are joined by Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a persecuted laborer at one of Christie’s plants located in China. Jianhu manages to jump across the ocean with the help of a purloined teleportation device. It’s that kind of movie.

The above description is already a lot, and it doesn’t even touch upon the character played by LaKeith Stanfield, a smooth Lothario who’s so handsome that he makes the film itself throb and quiver. (He also has a secret that’s revealed in one of the film’s audacious scenes.) The excess doesn’t cause Riley to stray too awfully far from authenticity. A key strength of I Love Boosters is the way Riley balances wildness with more deeply felt storytelling. Palmer’s performance is the touchstone of this approach. She hits plenty of moments with charismatic swagger, but the undercurrents of real and subtle emotion are what linger. The same is true of Naomi Ackie and Taylour Paige as Corvette’s main conspirators. Riley helps them shape performances that are at once freewheeling and grounded.

I Love Boosters is too proudly messy to be judged an unqualified success. Riley arguably tosses in too many theses until he has an impossible pick-up sticks pile of deep-thought concepts, the ideas that work (like a wicked depiction of astroturfed TV news interviews) lying crosswise to those that are less effective (some of the gags related to alternate settings on the transportation device). A surplus of ambition is still better than the alternative. Riley’s too much is just enough.