Perhaps you can remember what it was like during your last year of high school: afraid you wouldn’t be accepted into USC, frantically searching for scholarships and enough money to get here or squeezing in your last day with your friends before you said your goodbyes. Or perhaps you found $100,000 worth of Molly and a gun in your book bag and were forced to make a difficult non-negotiable decision about your future. Doesn’t sound familiar? Well maybe you haven’t seen the movie "Dope."
"Dope," released on June 19, tells the story of three high school seniors growing up in a poor area of Inglewood, Los Angeles. Their whole lives change overnight when they decide to attend a local gangster’s birthday party and get sucked into a world of drugs, guns and thug life.
The central character Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is a computer nerd, who is popular among the school staff for his undeniable brains and spends the first half of the movie expressing his desire to go to Harvard University. He also occasionally does drugs and is obsessed with 90s hip-hop and style and losing his virginity.
This strong desire to lose his virginity to a beautiful girl Nakia (Zoe Kravits) drags him to a party at a club that eventually leads to a police raid. He later finds a gun and a boatload of molly in his bookbag, which he is later forced to sell in order to make an impression on the alumnus who is conducting his Harvard interview, the ultimate drug lord.
"Dope" is an ingenuous interpretation of a coming of age movie in that it doesn’t hide the common, dirty details of America’s black youth getting wrapped up in “Risky Business.” The director, Rick Famuyiwa, strategically builds the characters to be your average teenagers, with goals and aspirations of being better than the indigent city they come from and later getting involved in circumstances that could jeopardize their futures.
This movie portrays a peculiar originality that is not usually seen in drug movies blended with coming of age motifs. "Dope’s" plot comes across inherently real, ditching those fake, compromised themes that deviate from the inescapable dangers of dealing with drugs, thugs and the police.
The three main characters stay in survival mode after they find the drugs, get held at gunpoint, barely escape police raids and get hunted and followed by dangerous people.
They even show the realistic aspects of the business side of drugs by finding ways to legally transport illegal money and sell drugs online. Their lives become unmanageable to the point they can’t even stand in line at the fast food restaurant, get on the bus, or pass the drug dogs and metal detectors placed at their schools.
Although, the movie hardly slacks on creating intensity and anxiety, "Dope" is, in fact, comedic. Malcolm gets himself into some hilarious situations such as being vomited on by a high, beautiful woman and trying to explain to their new white friend Will (Blake Anderson) why he can’t say the N-word.
"Dope" successfully reflects what it is like to grow up in the hood — where you are constantly choosing between two undesirable options. Although Malcolm is a good kid and wants more for himself than to become a local drug dealer, selling the drugs is a matter of life and death.
Also, the highly famous cast also contributed to the success of this film. With actors and actresses such as A$AP Rocky, Rick Fox, Kimberly Elise and Lenny Kravitz' daughter, Zoe Kravitz.
"Dope" has proved its potential to grab the attention of teens, young adults and older generations that can reminisce on their last days of childhood since it was released a month ago. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie is still playing in local theaters.