Michael Ledo Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is a geek growing up in "The Bottom" section of Inglewood. He wants to go to Harvard. He hangs out with two geek friends Jib (Tony Revolori) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) is a lesbian who likes Justin Bieber. They love things from the 1990s. While attending a birthday party at a club there was a shoot out and in all the excitement Malcolm grabs the wrong knapsack and gets the one filled with Molly.With the owner busted, there are others who want the bag while Malcolm stands at the crossroads of his life.Malcolm breaks the stereotype and provides us with an interesting character. There other characters were not as well developed, but were played well. This was one "thug" movie that I enjoyed.Guide: F-bomb. Near sex. Nudity (Chanel Iman of Victoria Secret)

Clifton Johnson I wanted this movie to be a truly original and insightful story masked as something more conventional. It turned out to be something pretty conventional masked as something more original and insightful. It was probably pitched at Sundance as "Orange County with black nerds!" Don't get me wrong: I was entertained. The 90s soundtrack was fun, and the main characters appealing, even if the story was predictable as hell and the race politics pretty shallow. I enjoy the occasional movie about nerdy upstarts caught up in something bigger, especially when well done. But I've seen this movie before, and setting it in "the hood" seemed less meaningful than the filmmaker thought it was.

Semisonic When we grow up we all have our dreams. Some want to go to college, some want to score hot babes, some want to be in a cool band, some want to be an OG, sell dope and wear a thick golden chain around their necks. And some want to shoot films about these folks.Well, it seems to me that at least Rick Famuyiwa made his dream come true. Well, in a sense that he managed to end up behind a camera and orchestrate the action in front of it. However, being a writer/director of a film doesn't give you a magic ability to truly fit the shoes of your characters. Instead, when you make a film about someone else's dreams, it's more like a story of how you imagine those dreams would be. And, in case of Dope, that's a big difference...We're all tired of those hardcore gangsta homies. So let's spin the story around a non-typical "nerd" black guy. He's the one who gets picked at by bullies and he's the one who actually plans to take the SATs. But that's just too flunky for the "tough" part of the target audience, so let's make our hero unlikely appealing to all sorts of women, getting in some nasty business with serious people, and eventually out-streetwise'ing them on the way to his dreams, so that it looks both generally satisfying and still unconventional. And yeah, let's make it all in style, just like we love it: a mix of Tarantino and Apatow, with a sprinkle of bling and hip-hop on top.Well, unfortunately, some things just don't go together well, at least not if you want believability. For example, you can't make a story of a nerdy wimp who goes nose-deep into the criminal business, to the point when he's bound to ask himself whether he's still the "good guy" he used to position himself as, gets on top of the situation and comes back to the surface as nothing but the profitable stuff stuck to him.It could've worked if Dope was trying to be Burn-After-Reading-like hilarious, because crazy things do happen when you assume that people are ridiculous. Or if Dope just remained a high-as-sh!t Pineapple-Express-kind-of flick through and through, because crazy things do happen when people are whacked out of their minds. But you don't start with the half-bizarre half-dummy approach, then go all dark and dramatic, and then go back and feed us the MC-Hammer-style dance moves during the ending credits. These numbers just don't add up.But the true problem of this movie is not those schizophrenic mood swings of its script. It's the fact that everything we see on screen tries its best not to be stereotypical and to avoid the clichés, but ends up simply fake, as if a dope dealer and a school straight-A nerd got their bodies switched, but their minds remained the same, totally ignorant of what their counterpart's life is really about. Malcolm is a geek, but only in terms of what other people might think geeks are about. Dom and Co are shady guys, but also just what you might think of them from passing them by on the street or watching a black gang movie. Neither side of this story had enough consistency to hold its weight, and the only explanation we get is that everything's "complicated". It sure as hell is, just not in the right way!The cherry on top of this festival of cardboard adventure is a scene with the purse maker. Every single thing you could've gotten wrong about people if you never actually cared to learn what they really do - it's all there. A fake bag maker who's also a blackmarket Bitcoin dealer. Who's also operating a computer with a two-button mouse with no wheel (it's 2015 guys, I really have no idea where the filmmakers dug up that fossil). Who's also testing his customers with a pseudo-insightful mumbo-jumbo speech and a demand of punching him in the jaw. Yes! If anything could beat a druggie who looks like a clown and moonlights as a mask-wearing pro hacker, that would be the only thing. Congrats guys, that's really dope.The only thing this movie didn't manage to fit inside is that if you're a black man and you don't do sports, then going to Harvard is still possible even without having to deal with arms or drugs or even pop-punk bands and videoblogging. You know, you could just be normal, doing the same boring stuff the white guys do. Maybe that's not fun enough, but at least it's real. But who wants to be real when you can go with a cool flat-top afro and a bunch of funky dance moves instead, right?

alexanderbrooks-80601 Judging from its theatrical trailer, Dope gave the impression of nothing more than some geeky teenager struggling to get through his last year of high school. Fortunately, it lived up to the slang definition of a term most often associated with illegal narcotics. Utilizing a cast of not necessarily the biggest names in Hollywood and Forest Whitaker as the narrator for the first ten minutes, the film perfectly takes hold of several different aspects. The first is that all too common theme of teenage popularity and acceptance among peers. Malcolm portrayed by Shameik Moore along with his two best friends, Tom boy Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) and Jib (Tony Revolori) are often bullied in and outside of school as demonstrated by them almost having their bikes stolen after going down the wrong street.A more underlying theme tackled during the film is the lack of belief in inner city children held by those charged with educating them. We get a strong glimpse of this when Malcolm meets with his counselor and expresses dreams of going to Harvard University after graduation. His dreams are quickly dismissed as arrogant and unrealistic, and Malcolm is told not to be optimistic prior to his interview for college admission. Despite the lack of support, Malcolm remains hopeful and close to his friends. With an excellent blend of comedy, endless one-liners, and a unique set of characters including Zoe Kravitz, daughter of famed musician Lenny, the film displays how a shy young man with aspirations of leaving his poverty stricken neighborhood undergoes a drastic transformation similar to that of Walter White in Breaking Bad. By the time the film ends, the same people that once struck fear into the heart of Malcolm and his friends now have a great deal of both reverence and fear of him. His turning of the tables on his counselor, admission interviewer, and school bullies cause us to view him as somebody more than ready to take on literally any challenge thrown his way. This transformation is great for a few reasons. It defies the stereotypes often time associated with people from Malcolm's neighborhood. Also, it leaves us wondering who Malcolm really is shortly before the credits roll. Is he a geeky kid who awkwardly loses his virginity to the daughter of one of his future rivals? Or is he a mastermind of one of the most brilliant undercover drug operations executed not for profit but for survival? Is he both? Are there other personalities lying dormant that might come out in a possible sequel chronicling his years as an undergraduate? However the audience chooses to view him, it is practically impossible not to root for whatever alter ego is running his mind at the time. His transformation is also great as we get a chance to see a young black male escape such a neighborhood doing something other than putting on an athletic uniform or picking up a microphone and dropping a mixtape. The inspiration of a minority from the "ghetto" being more than just an entertainer is refreshing. Overall, we'll score this production as a good example of what can happen when the heart and desire outweigh the circumstances. The results can be… dope.