‘I’m a Virgo’ Review: Jharrel Jerome Plays a Towering Teen in Boots Riley’s Inspired Prime Video Series

Daniel Fienberg
·5 min read
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Eccentric billionaires, especially ones who broadly promote their heroism, are not supposed to be our heroes. That’s one of the key takeaways from Boots Riley’s new dark comedy I’m a Virgo, a seven-episode red-hot poker in the eye of the corporate establishment, produced for Jeff Bezos’ Amazon platform.

I’m a Virgo has no lack of additional takeaways, mind you. Few contemporary storytellers can rival Riley when it comes to being playfully dogmatic, and I’m a Virgo wraps its anti-capitalist message in a very thin casing that’s part superhero drama and part allegorical satire. Even if the show often gives the impression that Riley has a surplus of big ideas and a deficit of narrative through which to present them, the half-hour episodes amount to a singular vision of contemporary economic inequality and race that’s sure to provoke a variety of responses — including irritation from viewers more interested in the pseudo-comic book wrapping than the substantive gift inside.

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As Walton Goggins’ Jay Whittle, a mogul blessed with an unnaturally lustrous head of hair lest anybody suspect he’s modeled after Amazon’s founder, accurately assesses: “All art is propaganda.” I’m a Virgo is absolutely propaganda — goofy, angry, frequently razor-sharp propaganda.

Jharrel Jerome, in his biggest — pun intended — role since winning an Emmy for When They See Us, plays Cootie, a sheltered 19-year-old from Oakland. He’s been raised by his aunt (Carmen Ejogo) and uncle (Mike Epps) to shun the poison of processed food and the cultural poison of television. He has, in fact, never left the house. See, Cootie is 13 feet tall and his guardians aren’t sure that the world is ready for him.

But Cootie, like all dreamers, thinks he’s ready for the world, and when he sneaks out and encounters a group of teenage activists (Kara Young’s Jones, Brett Gray’s Felix and Allius Barnes’ Scat), he’s thrust into the spotlight. Some people look at Cootie and see dollar signs. Others, including Flora (Olivia Washington), an aspiring chef with her own outsider status, see him as a marvel. And, of course, others see him as a freak or, worse, a monster.

The latter group includes Whittle, a publishing magnate and heir to “a modern computational instruments fortune.” Whittle created a comic book hero called The Hero, whose crusade for law and order finds him cracking down on petty crimes — noise violations, illegal marijuana distribution — with a focus on perpetrators of color. Whittle then brought that character to life in the real world.

Once he’s been exposed to modernity, will Cootie be a messiah or a supervillain or just an ordinary guy interested in sampling chain hamburgers and finding love?

Riley has surrounded himself with an eclectic writing staff including Tze Chun (Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai) and Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop), and the result is something of an intellectual collage. Depending on the moment, I’m a Virgo can be borderline child-like, with hints of an almost Roald Dahl-esque blending of the crude and folkloric, or childishly puerile, with its wholly reasonable fascination with the consequences of a 13-foot-tall man having sex. It’s rarely at its best when it’s mining the tropes of the superhero world (though the possibility of Amazon funneling viewers to and from the superficially similar The Boys makes me laugh).

You can sense Riley wanting to engage with the authoritarian streak that audiences hastily forgive in Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne, and placing the perfectly off-kilter Goggins at the center of that thread is fun. But it’s easy to tell the difference between the things that amuse Riley and the things that piss him off. He’s angry at a healthcare system that prioritizes profits over saving lives. He’s irate about soaring rents and the criminalizing of poverty. He’s pissed off about food deserts and predatory chain restaurants and the culture that makes people crave those things at the expense of their own welfare. More than anything, he’s incensed about a capitalist system in which one group’s power and comfort require another group to be homeless or uninsured or incarcerated.

Seven episodes is more than enough time for the plot of I’m a Virgo, which I enjoyed more in its low-key coming-of-age mode than when it’s supposed to be exciting or propulsive. But it isn’t close to enough time for what has Riley worked up, and some things have to be glossed over. The series acknowledges the allure somebody like Cootie might have in the world of professional sports but, despite no industry making more money off the exploiting of Black bodies, Riley leaves that target aside in favor of a more superficial take on modeling, of all things. Given Riley’s dedication to the Bay Area, the series loses something from the decision to shoot in Louisiana instead of Oakland, but sense of place just isn’t central to his agenda this time around.

Even the limitations brought about by favoring tax incentives to save money for a zillion-dollar corporate giant feels like it could be a storyline in I’m a Virgo and, generally, the show doesn’t look limited. The effects surrounding Cootie’s size are thrillingly resourceful, opting for DIY ingenuity — courtesy of forced perspective, miniatures and even puppetry — rather than the needless polish of CGI. Polish isn’t in Riley’s bag of tricks and, with the Sorry to Bother You director behind the camera for each episode, the potentially discordant elements — commercial parodies, scenes from a very rough animated TV show, the Brechtian visualization of Jones’ Marxist speeches (delivered with passion by Young) — cohere with a rough-hewn charm.

If anything holds the series together other than Riley’s ideology, it’s Jerome, who gives Cootie an innocent joy, a credibly awkward physicality and the simmering passion of an untapped revolutionary. Because of the amount of trickery involved in all of their interactions, it’s tough to say that there’s “chemistry” between Jerome and Washington, but it’s miraculous how well they sell a love story that could be silly or gross if given less care. Riley and I’m a Virgo have much on their minds, but if viewers invest in the story — and I mostly did — it’s because Jerome and Washington give it heart.

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