Dope (2015)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on July 2, 2015 @ tonymacklin.net.

Dope has a jaunty hip-hop in its step.

The movie, set in the present day, pays homage to the Golden Age of Hip-Hop.

Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is a teenage fan of '90s hip-hop. He is committed to its heyday - in hairstyle, clothing, taste, knowledge, and music.

Director/writer Rick Famuyiwa has a smart, brisk take on an African-American teenager coming of age in The Bottoms, a rough part of Inglewood, California.

Raised by a single-mother (Kimberly Elise), Malcolm is not a member of a sports team, a gang, or drug dealers. He is a student - an A-student, and he has a goal of going to Harvard.

Malcolm is not really a nerd or a geek. He is too smooth and perceptive to fit those categories. Malcolm is more a vulnerable outsider.

Although he is mistreated by fellow students and gang members - he has a sneaker stolen - Malcolm is not anti-social. In fact, because he is articulate, Malcolm is enlisted by Dom (A$AP Rocky) to speak to Nakia (Zoe Kravitz), whom Dom wants to invite to his birthday bash. Because Malcolm succeeds, he too is invited to the party.

Malcolm hangs out with two other outsiders: Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) a lesbian tomboy, and Jib (Tony Revolori), the more cautious member of the trio. They are almost always together and have formed a punk band, Awreeoh (Oreo).

Dom's birthday party provides them a crisis. During the hysteria caused by a sudden gun battle, Malcolm unwittingly comes in possession of a large stash of Molly in his backpack. It's not your grandfather's, "Good Golly, Miss Molly." Molly now is a party/club drug.

The remainder of the film revs its engine and careens all over the place. One of the recurring themes in Dope is that life in the hood is a slippery slope.

The film is a slippery slope as Malcolm tries to climb from The Bottoms. The first half of the movie is grounded in infectious authenticity; the second half is haphazard.

When Whitey appears in the form of a hacker (Blake Anderson), Dope turns into a bad episode of TV's Silicon Valley. Dope turns into Bitcoin.

Fortunately, Famuyiwa's screenplay if chockfull of allusions, from DeLorean to Neal deGrasse Tyson, from Marty McFly to Steve Jobs.

But Dope has at least four endings.

It also has a riff on glib street vernacular.

It's just language. Use it. When people say, the "f-word," I think Frigidaire. When they say the "n-word," I think Nabisco.

Glib or profound, Dope strives for the summit. It takes a circuitous, bumpy route.

But because of its creative spirit, it gets there.

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