Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
As countless movies and shows have reminded us, growing up is hard. There’s an endless amount of peer pressure that dictates everything, from who you hang out with to your shoe choices, and, to quote DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith, “Parents just don’t understand.” But more often than not, these high school narratives feel boring and eye-rollingly predictable. Enter Rick Famuyiwa’s coming-of-age crime masterpiece, Dope.
The film, which premiered at Sundance, follows three high school geeks, Malcom (Shameik Moore), and his two friends Jib (Tony Revolori) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons). Malcom’s life is turned upside down and his dreams of escaping to Harvard are threatened when he and his friends become reluctant drug dealers. Through the course of the movie, Malcom has to prove he’s more than just a 90’s obsessed nerd or a single parent kid, defined by his tough surroundings — Inglewood, California, also known as “The Bottoms”. Malcom proves he’s a combination of his home, the things he loves, and his morals. In much the same way, Dope as a movie beautifully blends worn film tropes to create a movie that is as distinctively its own as it is a critique of the typical teen movie and Hollywood portrayals race.
Throughout the movie, Malcom is constantly told that he will never achieve his dreams of attending Harvard and that he is nothing more than his inner-city surroundings. This is definitely a narrative that’s been seen many times before — the determined outcast dedicated to escape his past and better himself — but in the hands of Malcom, Jib, and Diggy, the story is more relaxed and playful than dramatic. The trio play in a band, go to parties, complain about their parents, and do all of the typical things you expect teenagers to do. However, the three always feel like they’re actually friends. Their dialogue never feels too polished, and the atypically sexual Jib and the ultra-nerdy Diggy always feel like their own characters without ever diving into the caricature territory. And it would be so easy to dive into that territory by either capitalizing on these characters geekiness or transforming the whole movie into something that wouldn’t be out of place on The Wire. Instead, a straight-faced Moore delivers amazing lines like this:
If Neil deGrasse Tyson was writing about Ice Cube, this is what it would look like.
However, the threat of violence is never far behind in this complicated exploration of growing up. Dope takes place in “The Bottoms,” a neighborhood that is defined by crime and violence. Early on, the narrator of the movie mentions that another geek at Malcom’s high school was accidentally killed during a restaurant shootout. The movie and its characters laments the death of Tony Johnson as much as it laments Tony’s lost Gameboy progress. That‘s the line this movie constantly plays with — depressing gravity and light-heartedness. Yet, the movies never feels irrelevant toward the danger these kids are in. If anything, by creating a center group of characters who are interesting and believably “other” on their own, the threat of violence that hovers over every aspect of this film feels even more ominous.
Dope is what a coming of age story should look like — a story that fuses cultures, ideals, and modern day with the past. In a way, growing up is about looking at who raised you, the current attitudes around you, and what you like and deciding who you’re going to be from there. That’s what Malcom does, and that’s what Dope does all while geeking out about 90’s hip hop. The product is a funny and dramatic story that blends the lines between color, genre, and, most importantly, expectation.
