“Dope” has a common and basic skeleton of a story that should be instantly familiar to just about everyone. We’ve all heard stories and read books and seen movies and TV shows about a “good” person stuck in a bad situation, who usually has to resort to something they normally wouldn’t do in order to survive. Whether its a kid growing up in a bad neighborhood or a person working for a shady company or a person stuck with their shitty family, this is a go-to story because it is quite common and often relatable. What sets “Dope” apart is the specifics, the details, the little things that all add up to give this particular movie its own identity.

“Dope” centers on Malcolm (Shameik Moore), a high school senior living in a stereotypically rough Los Angeles neighborhood, where he spends most of his time with his single mom and his two best friends, and with the latter he has a pop-punk kind of band, and they also spend a lot of time delving into 1990’s hip-hop culture, lamenting that this was the golden age of rap music (though the movie doesn’t state it, I bet Malcolm is not a Young Thug fan). After a long set up establishing who Malcolm is and what his normal day-to-day plight is like, we gets himself invited to a club for a local drug dealer’s birthday party which turns into a shoot out which turns into Malcolm unwittingly making off with a couple of bricks of powdered MDMA and a gun. He (and his two friends) then find themselves having to sell the drugs for a local drug dealing big shot so that Malcolm can get a solid recommendation for his Harvard application (long story), and also so they don’t die.Continue Reading …