Are you looking for something fresh to watch after your “Barbenheimer” double feature of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer?”
Amazon Prime recently dropped all seven episodes of “I’m a Virgo,” proving that Boots Riley (“Sorry to Bother You”) is one of the wildest, most creative filmmakers today when it comes to dynamic visuals and searing social commentary. It’s the opposite of TV comfort food — this show prods and provokes.
The story follows Cootie (Jharrel Jerome), a 13-foot-tall teenager who grows up secluded from the outside world by his adoptive guardians, Aunt Lafrancine and Uncle Martisse, in Oakland, California. At age 19, he eventually leaves his carefully constructed nest to experience the beautiful contradictions of the real world, forming friendships, finding love, navigating awkward situations and even encountering his superhero idol, The Hero.
Jerome is more than just a rising star; everything he touches turns to gold, from the middle chapter of Barry Jenkins’ Best Picture winner “Moonlight” (2016) to his Emmy-winning role in Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries “When They See Us” (2019). He also currently stars in Steven Soderbergh’s Max miniseries “Full Circle,” but binge “Virgo” first to see Jerome embody empathy as a biological anomaly like Brad Pitt in “Benjamin Button” (2008).
Just as Taraji P. Henson and Mahershala Ali discovered a backwards-aging baby, Carmen Ejogo (“Selma”) and Mike Epps (“Next Friday”) play the loving but overprotective guardians, shielding him from society’s dangers. Unlike Netflix’s “Sweet Tooth” where Will Forte hoped his antlered son would remain hidden, Cootie’s guardians know their special nephew must one day face the world, stockpiling weapons for a looming battle that’s sure to come.
We won’t spoil what that battle is or exactly what futuristic weapons will be used, but let’s just say Riley drops a killer homage to Radio Raheem’s brass knuckles in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989), which of course were borrowed from Robert Mitchum’s “LOVE” and “HATE” knuckle tattoos in Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter” (1955). Riley is keenly aware of such pop culture references with Cootie hilariously shouting “Raiders!”
We know we’re in the hands of a visionary filmmaker right from the opening of each episode with unique ways to show the title “I’m a Virgo” — as vertical letters on a street, ketchup split on a counter, a helicopter hovering over furniture in an alley, a back tattoo through a window at a party, skid marks of car’s doughnuts in a parking lot, a penthouse apartment, and a bar billboard — not to mention the unspoken dialogue of the final cut to black.
Beyond the crafty credits, Riley also uses his camera for practical magic. As the oversized Cootie grows up in a standard-sized house, Riley uses forced perspective like the Hobbits in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” to grow or shrink actors in the same frame. Set among household items, the better comparison is Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004) where Jim Carrey looked tiny beneath Kate Winslet’s huge kitchen table.
In other episodes, Riley changes film speeds to show the special powers of Olivia Washington (“The Butler”) as Cootie’s girlfriend Flora. Moving with rapid speed, she accomplishes countless tasks while she waits for her slow surroundings to catch up, similar to Quicksilver in “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014). She fittingly works at a fast-food joint, Bing Bang Burger, registering a cashier “meet cute” with Cootie, bonding like a pair of misfits.
For all my directing praise, I should say that this show won’t be for everyone. At times, it’s so bizarre that it tests even my patience with TV sets showing the fictional cartoon “Parking Tickets” where characters keep saying “Boyoyoyoyoying.” While I was fascinated by the first five episodes, my interest faded in the final two, which veered heavily into superhero territory (Episode 6 is all about The Hero, played by Walton Goggins, “Justified”).
Still, beneath the popcorn superhero leanings with rapid editing and flashy camerawork, the overall series is saved by the powerful social commentary on display throughout. While Cootie’s parents give him a different version of “The Talk” that many Black parents sadly have to give their kids on racial profiling, Riley drops a bomb of an episode when a hospital refuses to treat a character without insurance, letting him bleed out at the bus stop.
The social commentary is mostly spoken by Kara Young (Broadway’s “Cost of Living”) as Cootie’s militant best friend Jones, who delivers a pair of trippy monologues on the “crisis of capitalism” in Episode 4 and Episode 7. Imagine Furious Styles’ vital gentrification lesson in “Boyz N the Hood” (1991) but presented as if Laurence Fishburne dropped Dennis Hopper’s acid from his debut in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (1979).
Viewers of all political affiliations will be shook by Jones’ fiery closing argument: “Capitalism necessitates unemployment and poverty, which necessitates illegal business, the regulation of which is what causes violence. How do you tell the whole working class that poverty and violence are necessitates by capitalism without them deciding to get rid of capitalism? You don’t. You tell them poverty is due to bad choices of those impoverished.”
The speech ends by saying, “Man, lock yourself up!” In an unfair world that arrogantly tells kids of color to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, Boots Riley is calling out the contradictions of such an ideal. As Dr. King wisely said, “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” Riley is ready to fight back — it’s Boots on the ground, baby.
