Review // Dope

[projekktor id=’19575′]

Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope is the type of movie that you want to look cool in front of. Wickedly smart with a killer soundtrack and stylistic flare, it’s a teenage quest story for the post-internet generation. And like that generation it can’t keep it’s attention on one thing for more than a few minutes, leaping between observances on racial politics to meme culture to the dark web. It is at times a day-in-the-life teen comedy, a crime caper and an empowerment drama. It’s Spike Lee meets Edgar Wright, and it’s all held together by a spirit of innocence and invention that leaves most indies looking like tea-time with grandma.

Dope stars newcomer Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a teenage kid obsessed with 90s hip hop who lives with his single mother in the rough streets of Inglewood, California. Malcolm and his friends Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) and Jib (Tony Revolori) are self-professed “geeks” which means that they are into “white shit” like “Donald Glover”. It also means they are the rare model students at a high school with metal detectors at the doors and bullies who steal your shoes. Spending their free time riding their BMXs through the streets (careful to avoid alleyways full of Bloods making YouTube videos), working on their college applications or playing in a punk band called Awwreoh (pronounced Oreo), the friends are unapologetic easy targets. However, when they sneak into the birthday party of local drug kingpin Dom (A$ap Rocky) and narrowly avoid a shootout, they find themselves in possession of a backpack full of MDMA, and become the targets for much bigger fish than just high school bullies.

It’s a ridiculously fun viewing experience, made all the more enjoyable thanks to a top-notch soundtrack and solid performances from the three lead actors.

The film’s middle act plays out like an action comedy before things take a swerve to the dramatic in the last few minutes, but the plot is largely secondary to the whole experience. Famuyiwa fills the story with a procession of strange characters, from a rapper who refuses to use the letter “C”, to the seductive daughter of a drug kingpin who turns into an internet meme, to gang-bangers debating the morality of Obama’s drone war, to the head of a fencing operation who conducts a holy grail-style test involving two purses. It’s a total mess, yet it’s held together by the bold stylistic choices of a director you’d think was half his age. At one point the film uses a cell phone like a time machine, jumping through pictures and social media posts to recreate the night before. Another time, Malcolm sits exhausted at the back of a bus as all of the people he’s met that day climb on, quietly grooving to Gil Scott-Heron’s Home Is Where the Hatred Is. It’s a ridiculously fun viewing experience, made all the more enjoyable thanks to a top-notch soundtrack and solid performances from the three lead actors.

Whether in all it’s excitement it really says much is open for discussion. While the director uses Malcolm to say his peace in an eloquent monologue at the conclusion of the film – largely targeted at the practice of the college admittance essay (and the ingrained expectation of a “poor black kid from crime filled neighbourhood who doesn’t know his father makes good” storyline) – it feels a little disconnected from much of the film’s carefree tone. This is a film much more akin to an online content aggregator than a well argued essay. Nevertheless, there is enough inventiveness even in the film’s down moments to make Dope shine brightly. It’s no surprise the film set off a bidding war at Sundance, and the recent news that the film will be the first to accept Bitcoin for ticket purchases lends a bit of credence to some of it’s bluster. Not that it really needs it.

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.