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#741 - Dope
Rick Famuyiwa, 2015
Three geeky high-school students attend a local drug dealer's birthday party only to find themselves unwillingly drawn into the criminal underworld.
Dope provides a rather interesting take on the hood film by ostensibly being set in a present filled with references to Internet memes and Bitcoins but also attempts to establish a certain degree of idiosyncrasy by having its lead trio be obsessed with the music and aesthetics of "golden age" hip-hop. Our three leads (Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, and Kiersey Clemons) are students at a Californian public school who do have to worry about surviving potential shootings and gang wars. Moore is granted precedence as the earnest overachiever who is looking to get into Harvard but also feels himself being unwillingly pulled towards the local drug game due to a number of factors, whether it's gang-related peer pressure or his infatuation with an attractive young woman (Zoë Kravitz). While attending the birthday party of a local dealer (A$AP Rocky), Moore has to escape when the police bust the place; he later discovers that his backpack has been stuffed with several packages of ecstasy and a gun. Though he and his friends desperately want to get rid of the contraband as quickly as possible, things are naturally not that simple.
The film starts off promisingly with a self-aware tone (complemented by Forest Whitaker as the matter-of-fact narrator whose intonations lend this potentially gritty film a vibe more becoming of your average Wes Anderson film) but as time wears on the film sinks deeper and deeper into being the kind of serious hood film that it originally mocked. It's handled messily enough that one can easily debate just how deliberate the shift in tone ends up being, though later attempts to compensate through humourous interludes can be seen as arguments for and against both sides of the case. Giving Moore precedence seems the most obvious through-line for the film, though it does so at the expense of his companions; the film pays some lip-service towards developing Clemons' butch lesbian but ultimately wastes a potentially interesting character, while Revolori is given even less attention or definition. The progression of the film's narrative also falls into some familiar plot points, such as Moore's upstanding goals such as going to college or hooking up with Kravitz's girl next door being challenged by Rocky's involving him in drug-running or Chanel Iman's voracious party girl easily seducing him. Even the film's more ostensibly comedic vibe doesn't always jibe well with the film's attempts at drama, especially as the film progresses and the group starts to take greater and greater risks to not only escape enemies but get rid of the bag of drugs.
The characters' retro style bleeds through into the soundtrack and peppers the soundtrack with old-school hits by the likes of Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, and Nas (plus a solid original score by Germaine Franco). There's the occasional concession to playful artifice such as Moore's breaking the fourth wall (especially when the film reaches its climax, which is alternatively effective and difficult) or a party montage comprised of Instagram posts and comments that naturally seems very flash-in-the-pan but at least offers an inventive variation on an otherwise banal plot device. The characters are largely underwritten but the cast have enough chemistry and individual talent to carry it off well, especially in the case of the lead trio functioning better as a unit due to their relative lack of individualised character development. The lack of characterisation is also symptomatic of various other script issues, whether it's Whitaker's narrator disappearing from the film after the first act or the various set-ups that don't really go anywhere, but Dope gets by thanks to its relatively fresh take on the hood film that invokes a creative enough aesthetic to make up for its narrative shortcomings. There's a lot of untapped potential at work here - I do reckon things would have been a bit more interesting if Clemons had been the protagonist instead of Moore - but as it stands it's still an enjoyably flashy attempt at capturing the zeitgeist.
Rick Famuyiwa, 2015
Three geeky high-school students attend a local drug dealer's birthday party only to find themselves unwillingly drawn into the criminal underworld.
Dope provides a rather interesting take on the hood film by ostensibly being set in a present filled with references to Internet memes and Bitcoins but also attempts to establish a certain degree of idiosyncrasy by having its lead trio be obsessed with the music and aesthetics of "golden age" hip-hop. Our three leads (Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, and Kiersey Clemons) are students at a Californian public school who do have to worry about surviving potential shootings and gang wars. Moore is granted precedence as the earnest overachiever who is looking to get into Harvard but also feels himself being unwillingly pulled towards the local drug game due to a number of factors, whether it's gang-related peer pressure or his infatuation with an attractive young woman (Zoë Kravitz). While attending the birthday party of a local dealer (A$AP Rocky), Moore has to escape when the police bust the place; he later discovers that his backpack has been stuffed with several packages of ecstasy and a gun. Though he and his friends desperately want to get rid of the contraband as quickly as possible, things are naturally not that simple.
The film starts off promisingly with a self-aware tone (complemented by Forest Whitaker as the matter-of-fact narrator whose intonations lend this potentially gritty film a vibe more becoming of your average Wes Anderson film) but as time wears on the film sinks deeper and deeper into being the kind of serious hood film that it originally mocked. It's handled messily enough that one can easily debate just how deliberate the shift in tone ends up being, though later attempts to compensate through humourous interludes can be seen as arguments for and against both sides of the case. Giving Moore precedence seems the most obvious through-line for the film, though it does so at the expense of his companions; the film pays some lip-service towards developing Clemons' butch lesbian but ultimately wastes a potentially interesting character, while Revolori is given even less attention or definition. The progression of the film's narrative also falls into some familiar plot points, such as Moore's upstanding goals such as going to college or hooking up with Kravitz's girl next door being challenged by Rocky's involving him in drug-running or Chanel Iman's voracious party girl easily seducing him. Even the film's more ostensibly comedic vibe doesn't always jibe well with the film's attempts at drama, especially as the film progresses and the group starts to take greater and greater risks to not only escape enemies but get rid of the bag of drugs.
The characters' retro style bleeds through into the soundtrack and peppers the soundtrack with old-school hits by the likes of Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, and Nas (plus a solid original score by Germaine Franco). There's the occasional concession to playful artifice such as Moore's breaking the fourth wall (especially when the film reaches its climax, which is alternatively effective and difficult) or a party montage comprised of Instagram posts and comments that naturally seems very flash-in-the-pan but at least offers an inventive variation on an otherwise banal plot device. The characters are largely underwritten but the cast have enough chemistry and individual talent to carry it off well, especially in the case of the lead trio functioning better as a unit due to their relative lack of individualised character development. The lack of characterisation is also symptomatic of various other script issues, whether it's Whitaker's narrator disappearing from the film after the first act or the various set-ups that don't really go anywhere, but Dope gets by thanks to its relatively fresh take on the hood film that invokes a creative enough aesthetic to make up for its narrative shortcomings. There's a lot of untapped potential at work here - I do reckon things would have been a bit more interesting if Clemons had been the protagonist instead of Moore - but as it stands it's still an enjoyably flashy attempt at capturing the zeitgeist.