Dope and all the images you see in this review are owned by Open Road Films
Directed by Rick Famuyiwa
We are smack dab in the middle of the summer blockbuster boom-a-thon where you can’t chuck a rock without it exploding and narrowly avoiding a recognizable character from a long running franchise. Who knows? Maybe the movie going public is ready for something other than dinosaurs and superheroes for about a week or so and this might just fill that necessary niche. No wait, they released it the same day as Inside Out. You’re telling me that this movie, from the director of a Carlos Mencia vehicle (Our Family Wedding), is trying to go up against a Pixar film!? If ANY movie had the balls to go up against the Mouse House, then this is either a film they just want to dump in theaters to get it over with, or something REALLY special that they are confident everyone will take notice of. Before my pessimism overwhelms you all, it might just fall into the latter category considering the very solid trailers and the fact that it was produced by Forest Whitaker (who was actually in Our Family Wedding) and Pharrell Williams who was also responsible for the soundtrack. Well it HAS to be better than Mac and Devin go to High School at least… right? Anyway, the movie is primary about Malcolm who is a high school student in Los Angeles with a 4.0 GPA and wants to get into Harvard. Not only that, but he’s also a huge nerd for nineties hip-hop and its aesthetic (just look at his flat top) which makes him an even more obvious target for bullying. One day, he ends up going to a drug dealer’s party which gets raided by the cops and he barely manages to escape with his friends and the love interest he was chasing after in the party. The next day at school though, he finds that the drug dealer managed to sneak a big ol’ bag of dope into his back pack and he has a bunch of angry mother fuckers looking for it. As circumstances begin to snowball, he and friends try to do whatever they can to get rid of the drugs without getting shot or thrown in jail.
The Reviewers Unite 