FOR about 10 minutes after “Dope” began lighting up the screen, I wondered whether I could endure the rest of its 112 minutes.
I could. And I happily did. Rick Famuyiwa’s film about teenagers coping with gangs, drugs, poverty and corruption has a deep humanist sentiment made even more palatable by a strong thread of intelligently-crafted humour.
At high school, kids Malcolm (Shamiek Moore), Jaleel (Quincy Brown) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) just want to make music and get grades good enough for entry to major universities. But the rest of the students look down on them as nerds, geeks. They find safety from on-campus bullying when dope dealer Dom (Rakim Myers) engages Malcolm to tell Nakia (Zoe Kravitz) that Dom wants her to come over and see him.
Before long, Malcolm, Jaleel and Diggy are embroiled in a chase plot involving a shipment of high-grade cocaine belonging to a rival dealer who brooks no intrusion on to his patch.
If this sounds dreadfully serious and perhaps slightly cliched, be not dismayed. Under those values flows a stream of humour and, for those who enjoy movies that invite them to think, social enquiry into the predicament of young African-Americans. The performances are fine. The plot is serpentine enough to engage and hold our attention. The film’s moral values are unabashedly up front.
Morality gets even more bogged down when Malcolm, at school for a pre-graduation interview, challenges the principal for the best of reasons – complicity in the drug importation.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Lily, slim, beautiful, from an upper-middle-class family and on the brink of a disastrous future from dope, booze and casual sex. Chanel Iman plays her with great verve and not a lot of clothes. Malcolm is lucky to escape her well-intended but scarcely-erudite attentions.
At Palace Electric
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