Dope wasn’t as dope as I thought it was going to be, but it’s good.

This is a movie about Malcolm and his two best friends, Diggy and Jib, and their adventures, so to speak, as three geeky senior year teenagers consumed by hormones in a school with unsympathetic bullies who eventually end up dealing drugs through a misfired birthday party (which they went to…because of said hormones. YAY! Adolescence!) and still trying to get into Harvard.

There are things that I love, and things that I hated. As always.

Forest Whitaker narrates the movie and he is good at it (surprised? Don’t be. He sounds good with his normal speaking voice.). Pharrell does the music, (as well as produces, along with Sean Combs – did you forget that was P Diddy? – Whitaker). The music is good. I love the 90s throwbacks, of course – I was psyched from the get because of it. I’m about that Fresh Prince box haircut and high tops. Bring back Naughty By Nature for the love of music!

This is the first movie I have seen A$AP Rocky in and I loved him. They shouldn’t have corrupted it by bringing Tyga on board. Boo. I’m glad they SPOILER ALERT killed him off quick. Lol. I quite liked the casting, actually. Kimberley Elise, also for two seconds – clearly a release to focus on young and upcoming talent – as well as Rick Fox, who barely ever needs to act, he can just…be there and be dope, ha. But the real stars were the main characters – Shameik Moore, of Jamaican descent who has a mixtape out and whose name sounds very close to another black caramel heartthrob and closely resembles a young Morris Chestnut, not that I have been stalking him on the interwebs or anything but LOOK:

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but I mean, whatever, you know. So, Shameik, Tony Revolori who plays Jib and Kiersey Clemons who gives a stand up performance as Diggy. You can also see her in Transparent – I just started that series, it looks good – but in Dope, these three get it down pat. I liked the twists in the story – the director who also wrote the film, did a good job bringing his story to life. (fun fact – Moore plays Malcolm Adekanbi, who is Nigerian-American, like, the director, Rick Famuyiwa)

I didn’t like a lot of the what I felt was a slightly implausible plot line. There is a part in the movie where they are being chased and could have easily avoided that scenario. Even the way the drugs happened was a bit iffy to me. I wanted Zoe Kravitz to have more screen time, because…she’s Zoe Kravitz, but…yeah. I didn’t love her character either, so that was fine. A couple of other characters and scenarios were excessively exaggerated or stereotyped but at least they moved on pretty quickly, although, the movie seemed much longer that its a bit over an hour and a half run. At the end of the day, this movie didn’t wow me, but it is still worth a watch. I give it a 6 and a half.