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Dope:
Dope is a weird film. I have no idea what it was trying to be, because I think it had no idea what it was trying to be. What we have here is another dramedy that just wants to push dramatic layers into a comedy. There is no sense of balance between those two elements, and it doesn't feel like they belong together, but they are here either way. It's as if two different movies got spliced together. There is a comedy about three dorky black kids who do white things like care about grades and college that are forced to sell drugs in unique ways because of the typical black society around them. There is also a drama about a good kid being corrupted by society around him. The comedy is funny, original, and great. The drama is melodramatic, cliched, and mediocre.
No matter how much I enjoyed or did not enjoy parts of Dope, I cannot deny how well made of a film it is. The acting is fantastic all across the board. Shameik Moore gets the big role as a kid named Malcolm trying to get into Harvard, however unrealistic it seems from his Inglewood dump. The script couldn't balance a full range of emotions, but Moore definitely can. I think this man is going to be a star someday soon. As the center of a coming of age story, he has to grow a lot in 100 minutes. Every single stage in his development was convincing. Kiersy Cemens and Tony Revolori play his two best friends. Both actors are very good, even though they are playing the same part. A lot of rappers get cameos, which had me concerned going in, but none of them are notably poor. A$AP Rocky was surprisingly decent as the drug dealer that forces Malcolm into his problems. This is also a pretty movie to look at. The lively colors bring out the Southern California flare that director/writer Rick Famuyiwa is known for, and I really liked the editing style on display. It has a quick cutting montage look similar to the one that Requiem For A Dream used. It doesn't use that look to as severe of a degree, but that's probably for the best, as the drugs on display here are more annoying than crippling.
The script has major issues. The most consistent one was that these supposedly intelligent kids are making decisions on the level of an 80's slasher victim. The movie keeps on telling us that these three kids are the smartest people in their town, but I don't believe it, because if that were even slightly true this movie would be over in 20 minutes. We never see any of them do anything intelligent or make a good choice about what they should do next. Malcolm gets a near perfect SAT score, but is completely inept at making an obvious decision to get rid of the drugs at the first opportunity. He's about to do something smart, but then he sees a hot girl and gets stuck in a worse position than he started in. Twice, with different girls both times. I sort of get what they were going for, that the book smart kid still has a lot to learn about street smarts, but the execution got botched somewhere along the way. There are also quite a few very serious subplots that never get a conclusion. The biggest example is the two men who first call Malcolm about the drugs. They chase him down, get into a shootout with his friends, and neither of the men nor the friend that shoots at them is ever referenced in the half of film that follows. A$AP Rocky's character has a significant role in the first act, but he is not once shown on camera after that. Rick might as well have wrote in that Malcolm got the results of the test back and definitely has breast cancer. It's almost funny how bad it is that the secondary conflict is left unresolved, especially when you consider that to the very end this movie is just adding more and more characters that have a huge effect on the plot for a few minutes. Proper film structure would tell you that you should have side characters have small effects on plot for the duration of the movie, because it feels cheap when the main problem is fixed up by some guy who the audience doesn't even know exists until he saves the day. I'm not sure whether this is an appropriate situation to use the term 'deus-ex-machina', but it is just as unsatisfying as one. The story is a contrived mess that only moves along because of people doing things out of character. There is also a speech at the end. Malcolm writes an application essay for Harvard which is basically the plot of the movie. That's fine. He uses what he learned about the rest of the world from his recent adventures and applies them to other areas of his life. He then looks directly into the camera and reads this speech. Directly to the camera. Rick, you have to trust your audience more than that. We understand what you tried to say with this film, you do not and should not have to summarize the themes of what we just watched in a monologue with no other characters even on screen. His clinching line is "Why do I want to go to Harvard? If I was white, would you even have to ask me that?" Beyond being patronizing, pandering, corny, and having an obvious rebuttal of "Yes, everybody gets the same application question," it makes the film less poignant. Up to that point, my understanding of the message was that black people should embrace their background along with their individuality to suceed, which gets contradicted to an extent by pulling the race card and trying to blend in with the accepted standards of black culture.
I will give the movie a ton of credit for its inventive use of its classic hip-hop score. The songs will usually correspond to the events that are happening or the feelings that the characters are going through, almost like a Disney musical where a pop singer and visual storytelling come together to show events instead of just telling them. The standout moment was when Malcolm sees one of his friends fleeing cops without any context while A Tribe Called Quest's Scenario is playing. Busta Rhymes says "bring it back, rewind" in the song, and the film plays in reverse from that friend's point of view to give the audience an idea of what events caused this. I thought that was a masterful device to lead into exposition. I won't claim that this is the first time a movie has ever been played in reverse on the cue of the music, but this is the first time I have ever seen it. The main trio also play in a garage rock band (titled something that has a different spelling on every website I try to check. It sounds like Oh-we-oh), and while those songs don't do as much for the story, they are all nice to listen to.
I really, really wanted to love Dope, but I can't. I refuse to call it overrated, because this rating reflects how much I enjoyed the film and I acknowledge that its cinematic quality is better, to the tune of at minimum 4 stars and maybe more. Its screenplay is its only serious flaw, but that screenplay is so bad that it takes me out of the movie completely. It feels like a cross between a generic Judd Apatow movie and a cheaply made Christian flick, and I mean both of those things in the worst way possible. The direction is great, the acting is often very good, but I think that for a comedy or even a lighthearted drama those things can only boost up the writing, which is the main attraction and the most important one to get right. It might also be a victim of circumstances, as this June movie may have been great then but at this point in time I can't imagine a situation in which I would ever choose to watch it instead of that other California rap coming-of-age story that I gave 5 stars to. Dope is worth watching once, but I cannot think of anything worth coming back for.
Dope:
Dope is a weird film. I have no idea what it was trying to be, because I think it had no idea what it was trying to be. What we have here is another dramedy that just wants to push dramatic layers into a comedy. There is no sense of balance between those two elements, and it doesn't feel like they belong together, but they are here either way. It's as if two different movies got spliced together. There is a comedy about three dorky black kids who do white things like care about grades and college that are forced to sell drugs in unique ways because of the typical black society around them. There is also a drama about a good kid being corrupted by society around him. The comedy is funny, original, and great. The drama is melodramatic, cliched, and mediocre.
No matter how much I enjoyed or did not enjoy parts of Dope, I cannot deny how well made of a film it is. The acting is fantastic all across the board. Shameik Moore gets the big role as a kid named Malcolm trying to get into Harvard, however unrealistic it seems from his Inglewood dump. The script couldn't balance a full range of emotions, but Moore definitely can. I think this man is going to be a star someday soon. As the center of a coming of age story, he has to grow a lot in 100 minutes. Every single stage in his development was convincing. Kiersy Cemens and Tony Revolori play his two best friends. Both actors are very good, even though they are playing the same part. A lot of rappers get cameos, which had me concerned going in, but none of them are notably poor. A$AP Rocky was surprisingly decent as the drug dealer that forces Malcolm into his problems. This is also a pretty movie to look at. The lively colors bring out the Southern California flare that director/writer Rick Famuyiwa is known for, and I really liked the editing style on display. It has a quick cutting montage look similar to the one that Requiem For A Dream used. It doesn't use that look to as severe of a degree, but that's probably for the best, as the drugs on display here are more annoying than crippling.
The script has major issues. The most consistent one was that these supposedly intelligent kids are making decisions on the level of an 80's slasher victim. The movie keeps on telling us that these three kids are the smartest people in their town, but I don't believe it, because if that were even slightly true this movie would be over in 20 minutes. We never see any of them do anything intelligent or make a good choice about what they should do next. Malcolm gets a near perfect SAT score, but is completely inept at making an obvious decision to get rid of the drugs at the first opportunity. He's about to do something smart, but then he sees a hot girl and gets stuck in a worse position than he started in. Twice, with different girls both times. I sort of get what they were going for, that the book smart kid still has a lot to learn about street smarts, but the execution got botched somewhere along the way. There are also quite a few very serious subplots that never get a conclusion. The biggest example is the two men who first call Malcolm about the drugs. They chase him down, get into a shootout with his friends, and neither of the men nor the friend that shoots at them is ever referenced in the half of film that follows. A$AP Rocky's character has a significant role in the first act, but he is not once shown on camera after that. Rick might as well have wrote in that Malcolm got the results of the test back and definitely has breast cancer. It's almost funny how bad it is that the secondary conflict is left unresolved, especially when you consider that to the very end this movie is just adding more and more characters that have a huge effect on the plot for a few minutes. Proper film structure would tell you that you should have side characters have small effects on plot for the duration of the movie, because it feels cheap when the main problem is fixed up by some guy who the audience doesn't even know exists until he saves the day. I'm not sure whether this is an appropriate situation to use the term 'deus-ex-machina', but it is just as unsatisfying as one. The story is a contrived mess that only moves along because of people doing things out of character. There is also a speech at the end. Malcolm writes an application essay for Harvard which is basically the plot of the movie. That's fine. He uses what he learned about the rest of the world from his recent adventures and applies them to other areas of his life. He then looks directly into the camera and reads this speech. Directly to the camera. Rick, you have to trust your audience more than that. We understand what you tried to say with this film, you do not and should not have to summarize the themes of what we just watched in a monologue with no other characters even on screen. His clinching line is "Why do I want to go to Harvard? If I was white, would you even have to ask me that?" Beyond being patronizing, pandering, corny, and having an obvious rebuttal of "Yes, everybody gets the same application question," it makes the film less poignant. Up to that point, my understanding of the message was that black people should embrace their background along with their individuality to suceed, which gets contradicted to an extent by pulling the race card and trying to blend in with the accepted standards of black culture.
I will give the movie a ton of credit for its inventive use of its classic hip-hop score. The songs will usually correspond to the events that are happening or the feelings that the characters are going through, almost like a Disney musical where a pop singer and visual storytelling come together to show events instead of just telling them. The standout moment was when Malcolm sees one of his friends fleeing cops without any context while A Tribe Called Quest's Scenario is playing. Busta Rhymes says "bring it back, rewind" in the song, and the film plays in reverse from that friend's point of view to give the audience an idea of what events caused this. I thought that was a masterful device to lead into exposition. I won't claim that this is the first time a movie has ever been played in reverse on the cue of the music, but this is the first time I have ever seen it. The main trio also play in a garage rock band (titled something that has a different spelling on every website I try to check. It sounds like Oh-we-oh), and while those songs don't do as much for the story, they are all nice to listen to.
I really, really wanted to love Dope, but I can't. I refuse to call it overrated, because this rating reflects how much I enjoyed the film and I acknowledge that its cinematic quality is better, to the tune of at minimum 4 stars and maybe more. Its screenplay is its only serious flaw, but that screenplay is so bad that it takes me out of the movie completely. It feels like a cross between a generic Judd Apatow movie and a cheaply made Christian flick, and I mean both of those things in the worst way possible. The direction is great, the acting is often very good, but I think that for a comedy or even a lighthearted drama those things can only boost up the writing, which is the main attraction and the most important one to get right. It might also be a victim of circumstances, as this June movie may have been great then but at this point in time I can't imagine a situation in which I would ever choose to watch it instead of that other California rap coming-of-age story that I gave 5 stars to. Dope is worth watching once, but I cannot think of anything worth coming back for.