In many ways, Dope is
a standard coming-of-age American indie, right down to the buzzy Sundance
premiere and self-consciously precious stylization. What saves it from growing
insufferable is its energy and perspective. Writer-director Rick Famuyiwa (The Wood, Brown Sugar) gives the proceedings a loping eccentricity
informing each meandering step through a fraught Inglewood odyssey. It stars a
good kid in a bad neighborhood, who is pulled away from his path to Harvard through
a series of accidents and coincidences, then must work his way back. Complications
pile up, and a variety of subplots and supporting characters push each other
off screen for puzzling periods of downtime. It’s a movie with too much, finding time in its loose plot for narration on everything from
racial authenticity to gay rights, drug dealers debating the morality of
drones, and Pharrell-penned musical interludes. It’s too much, but when it
settles into an easy groove, it’s a pleasure.
Set in modern day Los Angeles County, high-schooler Malcolm
(Shameik Moore) and his buddies (Kiersey Clemons and Tony Revolori) look like
they stepped out of Yo! MTV Raps in
the early 90’s. Self-described black geeks, they love old school hip-hop,
playing in a garage band they started after dropping out of marching band, and
shopping for vintage gear. The opening narration (delivered smoothly by Forest
Whitaker) tells us they aren’t in a gang and don’t do drugs, spending their
days dodging dangerous characters while working towards good SAT scores, a fun
prom, and going to college. But, with their adolescent urges, they’re always
looking for ladies. When a nice girl from the block (Zoë Kravitz) invites them
to a birthday party down at the club, they can’t help themselves, even though the
guest of honor is a notorious local dope dealer (A$ap Rocky).
Their plans for the future are thrown into doubt when the
police break up the party and the dealer stashes his dope in Malcolm’s bag. Our
leads escape, but soon those dangerous characters draw near as the trio
scrambles to stay alive and get rid of the drugs in a way that’ll get them out
of trouble with both cops and criminals. They’re caught between a dealer and a
law place. For a while it’s a madcap scramble to get the bag back to its owner,
a goal complicated by a rival dealer (Amin Joseph), a slimy businessmen (Roger
Guenveur Smith), a high rich girl (Chanel Iman) and her aspiring producer
brother (Quincy Brown), and Malcolm’s mom (Kimberly Elise). A tight focus on
this crisis, in a one-crazy-After Hours-day
mode, rockets the movie along, but soon drifts away as the film swells with misjudged
comedy and overcrowded subplots – romantic, academic, criminal, and more –
which drain the threat of immediacy.
A sort of slow-motion caper movie, with a supporting cast
too sporadically deployed and stereotypically defined to really pop, the key
source of interest is Malcolm. Rachel Morrison's smooth cinematography keeps him the center of attention as Moore delivers a loose, funny, charismatic
performance. It’s easy to root for the meek geek in over his head in situations
out of his control, and Famuyiwa finds workable tonal slipperiness by allowing
the central character such fine consistency. Through a gauntlet of disreputable
scenarios by turns comic, suspenseful, and sexy, we watch this young
man attempt to wrest back agency in his own life and prevent damaging his Ivy
League dreams. The way there takes too many detours, but Moore’s allowed to be
the sort of performer who immediately draws attention and sympathy whenever
he’s on screen. His climactic recitation of his college application essay, looking straight out at the audience before pulling up his hoodie and walking away, is
such a powerful moment of rhetoric. It’s almost excusable how uninvolving the film’s
back stretch – involving a dumb hacker (Blake Anderson), and some far-fetched
contrivances – grows, plus the few extra endings beyond that point.
The telling may be shaggy, but there’s still some appeal in
the framing. Matching the main trio’s throwback vibe, Famuyiwa’s direction is
similarly inspired by early-90’s culture, specifically the particular indie
sensibility birthed by the early successes of Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino,
John Singleton, and Kevin Smith. There was a period of a few years where all
you needed to launch a tiny film project was semi-comic violence, ironic
distance, loud politics, dialogue saturated with pop culture patter, and
liberal use of split-screens, title cards, arch narration, and malleable
chronology. Few of the derivative works were as good as their inspirations, and
even some of them weren’t that good.
But somehow, twenty years on, there’s some freshness in seeing the old tropes
again, especially when brought to a slick hipster synthesis speaking to
uniquely modern discourse on race and opportunity (and technology, though
dropping the word “bitcoin” a hundred times doesn’t make it as successful a
topic here). There’s personality to spare, enough to almost cover up its sloppier
parts.
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