Susan Granger’s review of “Dope” (Open Road)
“I was always this weird outcast kid,” explains filmmaker Rick Famuyiwa, whose coming-of-age teen comedy was the hit of Sundance last January. “My parents are from Nigeria, so I’m a first-generation American. But I have this weird last name that people assume is Japanese. I like defying expectations.”
Famuyiwa’s break-through feature begins with its title’s dictionary definition. Depending on its context, dope can be 1) an illegal substance, 2) a person who acts in a foolhardy manner or 3) a term of praise in African-American slang, meaning coolness. All three come into play in this dramedy.
Nerdy Malcolm Adenkabi (Shameik Moore) loves ‘90s hip-hop, BMX bikes, and skateboards. A bright, ambitious student, he aspires to get into Harvard, but he lives with his single mother (Kimberly Elise) in Los Angeles in a crime-riddled Inglewood ‘hood known as “The Bottoms.”
Malcolm also fronts a punk-rock band with his pals: Diggy (Kiersey Clemons), an androgynous lesbian whose sexual orientation is at odds with her church, and Jib (Tony Revolori), a geeky Pakistani.
One day, after school, as Malcolm is adroitly avoiding a bully, he’s accosted by a local drug dealer, Dom (A$AP Rocky), requesting that Malcolm to hook him up with Nakia (Zoe Kravitz), who is studying for her GED up the street.
But when there’s a shootout at Dom’s underground birthday party, Malcolm accidentally ends up with a backpack containing a gun and the designer drug called Molly. His dilemma: how to quickly unload the stuff using Bitcoin as currency – without getting killed.
Writer/director Rick Famuyiwa (“The Wood,” “Brown Sugar”) frantically juggles so many themes, styles and tones that sometimes it gets confusing, even though narrator/producer Forest Whitaker insightfully interweaves the concept with its various subplots.
Personifying Malcolm’s adaptability, Shameik Moore establishes himself as a major talent, while Tony Revolori (the lobby boy in Wes Anderson’s “Grand Budapest Hotel”) scores again with his comic timing.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Dope” is a raw, raucous 7, an irreverent riff on the duality of race relations in America.
