“Stick to the script.” That’s the first rule at the telemarketing firm where Cassius Green, an Oakland striver-slash-stoner, finds a job. Sales reps are supposed to start with “Sorry to Bother You,” which is the title of Boots Riley’s movie about Cassius’s rise, fall and bizarre sideways bounces. Mr. Riley is not sorry at all. If you’re not bothered — also tickled, irked, mystified and provoked — then you’ve fallen asleep on the job.

It’s fair to say that “Sorry to Bother You” sticks to its own script, but crucial to add that the script in question flips, swerves, meanders and all but explodes in a flurry of ideas and inspirations. If Mike Judge’s “Office Space” and Robert Downey Sr.’s “Putney Swope” hooked up after a night of bingeing on hallucinogens, Marxist theory and the novels of Paul Beatty and Colson Whitehead, the offspring might look something like this.

If you wanted to propose an alternative genealogy — an episode of “The Twilight Zone” directed by Melvin Van Peebles and Ken Loach; a blaxploitation Polish sci-fi allegory from the ’70s; a puppet show produced by Kendrick Lamar and Charlie Kaufman — I wouldn’t be mad. Mr. Riley, an artist, activist and musician making his feature-directing debut, is both an omnivore and an original. One of the secondary pleasures of watching “Sorry to Bother You” is sifting through its possible influences. But Mr. Riley isn’t constructing yet another postmodern playhouse out of borrowings and allusions. He’s building a raft, and steering it straight into the foaming rapids of racism, economic injustice and cultural conflict.