Boots Riley doesn't seem like the type of person who'd want to take on a Marvel or DC adaptation, but there are clearly a lot of superhero comic influences on his new Amazon Prime Video series I'm a Virgo. Riley filters those influences through his radical anti-capitalist perspective and skewed surrealist sensibility, as previously expressed in his 2018 feature film Sorry to Bother You. I'm a Virgo is also set in Oakland, California, at the intersection of political activism and magical-realist absurdity. Riley packs in a lot of both of those elements, making I'm a Virgo unwieldy but compelling and full of strange, unexpected twists.
The Virgo of the title is Cootie (Jharrel Jerome), a literal giant who's spent his entire life hidden away from the outside world. At 19 years old, he stands 13 feet tall and lives in a custom-built house designed by the aunt and uncle who raised him. Martisse (Mike Epps) and Lafrancine (Carmen Ejogo) are afraid of how Cootie will be treated if people discover his existence, given the history of abuse and exploitation experienced by similar giants in the past. Cootie is a curious teenager, though, and he eventually finds his way out of his sheltered compound and onto the street.
Although he's naive and awkward, Cootie is friendly and open, and he quickly falls in with a group of friends, including the laid-back Felix (Brett Gray) and the politically motivated Jones (Kara Young). They introduce him to the wonders of modern society, including marijuana and fast food. While discovering the mass-produced food at Bing-Bang Burger, he meets Flora (Olivia Washington), a charming cashier and cook who is also a human anomaly. She's the equivalent of the Flash or Quicksilver, but she exists in a constant state of super-speed that she has to slow down in order to communicate with everyone else.
Cootie and Flora don't see themselves as superheroes, but there's one person in their world who does, even though he doesn't have any superpowers: Wealthy business mogul Jay Whittle (Walton Goggins) has gone from publishing a comic book series about a vigilante known as The Hero to becoming The Hero himself, donning a costume and using the resources at his disposal to stop crime. He's a self-serving fascist superhero who'd fit right in on The Boys or Watchmen, and his idea of stopping crime means enforcing the letter of the law, regardless of actual justice. Cootie grew up reading The Hero comic books, but he's about to discover that his childhood idol is no role model.
The Hero is just one of the odd figures who populate Cootie's world on I'm a Virgo, which is full of subplots and narrative detours that often don't pay off or peter out into nothingness. There's a cult of people dressed in Steve Jobs-style black turtlenecks and jeans who believe that Cootie is their prophesied messiah. There's a group of residents of a low-income Black neighborhood who've somehow been shrunk down to doll size in a half-formed bit of class commentary that recalls Alexander Payne's misguided flop Downsizing. Elijah Wood shows up for a single scene as an anti-death penalty activist training to become an executioner.
Wood's random appearance is one of the funnier moments in I'm a Virgo, and Riley -- who directed all seven episodes and wrote three -- has a knack for combining off-kilter humor with moral lessons. I'm a Virgo is at its most entertaining when it's just being weird, as in the alternately gross and tender scene of Cootie and Flora navigating how to have sex for the first time. Riley's political message is sharp and focused, but it can become didactic, and the climax of the season finale is a literal lecture from Jones about the evils of capitalism. She spends the bulk of the series organizing strikes against major corporations and rallying the people of Oakland to tear down the system that's oppressing them.
It's also a bit ironic that such a strident anti-capitalist piece -- in which one character declares, "All art is propaganda" -- is premiering on the streaming service of one of the world's largest corporations, the kind of institution that would certainly be an enemy in the world of I'm a Virgo. There's no specific Amazon analog on I'm a Virgo, but Jones' message is clearly opposed to such monolithic companies, and that's the show's message, too.
As in Sorry to Bother You, Riley uses bizarre comedy to reach a wider audience with that message, and he doesn't neglect artistry in favor of activism. I'm a Virgo looks gorgeous, with many of its sci-fi elements realized via practical effects that give it a sense of weight and realism, even in a patently unreal setting. Riley periodically cuts to a deranged animated series called Parking Tickets which is hugely popular in the world of I'm a Virgo, with a visual style that recalls counterculture underground comics artists like R. Crumb and Peter Bagge. There's no mistaking the urgent message of I'm a Virgo, but that never diminishes its entertainment value.
The seven-episode first season of I'm a Virgo premieres June 23 on Amazon Prime Video.