DOPE (8.5 out of 10) Written and Directed by Rick Famuyiwa; Starring Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons, Blake Anderson, Zoë Kravitz, Rakim Mayers aka A$AP Rocky, Quincy Brown, Chanel Iman, Roger Guenveur Smith, Rick Fox, Bruce Beatty; Rated R for “language, drug content, sexuality/nudity, and some violence-all involving teens”; in wide release 6/19/2015.
Geeks come in all shapes, backgrounds, and races. This is the story of Malcolm (Shameik Moore), a geek living in a rough neighborhood in Inglewood (always up to no good!), Los Angeles. He takes beatings and harassment from drug dealers and gang members for being into “white shit” like Game of Thrones, manga, comic books, and getting good grades and wanting to go to college– specifically, Harvard. Oh, and he is also the lead for a trip-hop EDM punk band called Awwreoh (pronounced like the name of the trademarked cookie).
And as the movie’s tagline reminds us: it’s hard out there for a geek.
Through a series of misadventures trying to impress a girl (Zoe Kravitz), on the eve of Malcolm’s make-or-break Harvard alumni interview, he and his friends end up at a party– a drug dealer’s birthday party — and of course, a huge amount of drugs gets stashed in his backpack. Through another series of misadventures, he’s placed in the unfortunate situation where he will have to sell the drugs (specifically, MDMA aka Molly) himself, and both his life and his application to Harvard end up on the line.
This movie is really funny. As serious as a lot of this sounds, and as serious as issues of drugs, race, violence, etc are, there are a lot of jokes and the cast is as entertaining and hilarious as anything Hollywood has recently tried to put together (I’m looking at you, all of Kevin Hart’s movies so far this year!) But ultimately, this is a story about Malcolm looking to figure out his identity and about growing up.
On top of the comedy, on top of the drama, there’s also some really deep issues that this film brings up. In the same week as the Rachel Dolezal story blew up, it’s good to see a strong message about racial identity and what it means to be white, what it means to be black. Malcolm’s personal essay he submits to Harvard that he reads over the final minutes of the film present one of the most powerful messages about race we’ve heard in a long time.
But these racial messages and themes have a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Not only is this film funny, but we’re also aided by a great performance by Blake Anderson from Comedy Central’s “Workaholics,” who spends large amounts of his screen time (when he’s not getting high) on trying to justify to other black people why he should be “allowed” to use the n-word. It’s funny and it’s very illuminating… and also leaves the issue unresolved in many ways, and open to more discussion later.
There’s also some deep commentary in here about drugs, and especially the cycle that saddles poor black communities with violence in order to provide recreational drugs to middle class white people. Ouch. There’s faint echoes of the 2000 film “Traffic” in here, but only faint ones.
Overall, this is more like a cross between “Risky Business” and “Friday,” all lovingly deep fried in classic 90’s alt hip hop– Diggable Planets, Nas, Digital Underground, Naughty by Nature… have a listen to the whole soundtrack streaming here. And make sure you stick around through the credits to watch Malcolm and his friends dance to “The Humpty Dance.”
What’s truly great about it is how organic it feels– Malcolm is a self-proclaimed superfan (and geek!) about 90’s hip hop, so what we’re getting is his soundtrack. This is the same sort of organic soundtrack that worked for “Guardians of the Galaxy” and allowed it to shoehorn a lot of music in. This also includes three tracks from Awwreoh themselves. And, of course, those amazingly catchy songs were ghost-written by Pharrell Williams, who also served as an executive producer on the film.
What really connected with me is this connection through geekdom. Malcolm was a completely relatable character to me, because his feelings of alienation in high school were not much different from my own. . . except I didn’t have to ever worry about getting shot by accidentally being in the place at the wrong time. My point here is not to equate our experiences, but to show the universality that I hope white audiences will seek out, rather then miss this great film by worrying they won’t relate to it because they don’t know what it’s like growing up in a place like Inglewood.
If geek cinema is ascendant in Hollywood today, this is the first black geek masterpiece. Go check it out.
8.5 out of 10