Dope is a coming-off-age tale directed by Rick Famuyiwa starring Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a young, straight-A student living in 2015 Los Angeles, despite talking, dressing and acting as if he was from the 90s. After Malcolm and his friends are invited to an underground party, a chain of events are set in motion whereby they are forced to enter the LA drug scene which culminates in a story that blends together drama, comedy and romance seamlessly.
If anything, Dope is an extremely original film bursting with personality, charm and charisma. If you were to read the premise of this film alone then you wouldn't be weird to assume that this film could be a cliché look at a young, black, geeky child who struggles to fit in, attempting to gain the audience's sympathy. That would have been an easy chance for the film to take. Fortunately, Dope does not play it safe. Instead of adopting a sympathetic tone, Dope actually embraces the reality of Malcolm's situation and rolls with it.
By doing this, the movie utilises dark humour a lot of the time whilst never becoming an out-and-out comedy, usually the best possible result when trying to integrate humour into a screenplay. If you're not a fan of bleak and in-your-face type humour, Dope may not be the film for you. Personally, I love dark humour and as a result really enjoyed my time watching Dope.
The lead performance by Shameik Moore is completely off the charts and is the glue which binds the film together. He is excellent at portraying his character, and its a combination of his well rounded acting and the smart screenwriting which makes you as an audience member naturally latch onto and like him almost immediately. There is a scene very early on in the film whereby Malcolm is meeting with his school teacher concerning his college application. The dialogue written for Malcolm in this scene is as close to perfection as humanely possible, and as soon as he said it I knew I was going to relate and route for him for the film's entirety, regardless of how morally ambiguous his decisions become.
Dope is also a film which is aesthetically energetic due to the fact it is ridiculously stylistic, which I thought was a good thing. The hip-hop soundtrack, the unique cinematography and the flashy editing techniques all added to the film's varying tone of both drama and dark comedy. The editing is a real standout, and really made the film more enjoyable for me. For example, there are times in the film whereby it pauses, rewinds back in time and shows us the coinciding events which led up to that particular moment. I'm sorry if that doesn't make any sense, but if you see the film you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
As I've said previously this film is tonally varying which at times means that there are a lot of very random scenes which occur. The "adventure" Malcolm and his friends undertake takes them all over the place. But my main issue with this film is on moral/thematic level. The concluding scenes of the film come across as very preachy to the point where all subtlety concerning it's thematic message flies out the window. I don't necessarily agree with one of the film's "messages".
Malcolm does something terrible but gains respect and prestige amongst people who previously bullied and berated him. He's being rewarded for doing a horrible thing. Admittedly I still like the character of Malcolm regardless of the terrible thing he does in the film's third act, I just simply don't agree with it on a moral level, which ultimately detracted my enjoyment of the film.
But just because I can't fully connect with one of the films overarching themes doesn't mean I am going to hate the film as I have so many positive things to say about one of the best limited releases I've seen in quite a long time. Dope utilises dark humour brilliantly, is stylistic in all the right ways and is held together by a truly great lead performance. But above everything, Dope is utterly original and is worth seeing for sure:
Rating - B+
Thanks for reading,
Matt
No comments:
Post a Comment