Release Date: October 13, 2015
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

From Grammy Award winner Pharrell Williams and Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker comes a fresh and fun coming-of-age comedy Dope, nominated for the coveted Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is a straight-A high-school senior into old-school rap who finds himself in the middle of an adventure involving shady drug dealers, offbeat weirdos and a backpack that can make or break his chance of getting into Harvard. Also starring hip-hop talent A$AP Rocky, Blake Anderson (“Workaholics”), Zoë Kravitz (Divergent), Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel), rapper Tyga and supermodel Chanel Iman.

If you’ve seen Our Family Wedding or Brown Sugar, you’ve seen writer/director, Rick Famuyiwa’s work before and know you’re in for a great story even before turning this movie on. Now I haven’t seen the former but at one point in time, I loved the latter. This right here is different. And I love it even more.

It’s coming of age. It’s about a kid who knows himself and doesn’t fit in and lives in a neighborhood that challenges all of that. It’s my black geek story minus one element (never grew up in the hood) so I relate to this character so much and had quite a whiplash reaction to seeing basically me in an environment I could have easily grown up in. It was like an alternate reality and man, life is funny.

Dope is also heavily music inspired as the main character, Malcolm is in a band with his two best friends. And Dope is hysterical. I laughed way more than I thought I would and I enjoyed the music more than I thought I would too…but it’s Pharrell Williams music so there’s no reason to have any doubts going into this.

Note though, the language is a lot for someone who doesn’t curse and isn’t around much cursing so just be aware of that before popping this one in the blu-ray player. It’s realistic so it didn’t bother me because it was an authentic portrayal of the environment and wasn’t overdone.

Now at first, it was so odd to see Kiersey Clemons in such a different role after watching her on Extant all summer long but she has proved herself be quite the chameleon. After the first twenty minutes or so, I really saw her in this role and this role alone. She nailed it. She plays one of Malcolm’s friends and speaking of his friends, I love, love, love the friendship dynamic in this movie. Friendship relationships are so under-appreciated so I couldn’t get enough of Malcolm, Diggy, and Jim. It was heartwarming, hysterical, and at times, both. If there was a list of best friendships on film this year, these three would be on the list.

Anyway, there’s so much I love about this film. Especially that the stakes for Malcolm continue to rise and he’s constantly stuck between making really awful decisions. The storytelling is stellar. The film has such an innocent heart, following a kid who has so much going for him and so many unfortunate series of events along the way in his senior year of high school. He’s fighting for his future but also fighting just to get through the day to day unscathed. Alive.

And the filmmaking choices were superb. I loved the pacing, the overall tone of the film, the directing, it all came together seamlessly. I really enjoyed this film in every sense of the word and have already watched it again. Something tells me this will be a film I turn on more and more now that it’s in my collection because it is just so good. So if you have yet to see the movie, now’s the time to get it!

Bonus Features:

Dope is Different (3:21 minutes) – This is a great feature that is short and to the point, in which the cast and crew talk about the main characters and how they are a product of their environment as actor,Tony Revolori says, stuck in between a bad choice and a worse choice as actress, Kiersey Clemons puts it. Ain’t that the truth. I also love that Rick Famuyiwa says that the character of Malcolm is very secure in his uniqueness. Malcolm and his best friends are most definitely secure in themselves. And yet. You can get caught up. And still. Anything is possible. Excellence is at the hands of everyone. What a great feature showing this, the heart of the story of Dope. I loved it.

Appearing in this Feature:
Director/Screenwriter/Executive Producer, Rick Famuyiwa
Executive Producer, Pharrell Williams
Producer/Narrator, Forest Whitaker
Cast Members, Shameik Moore, Kiersey Clemons, A$AP Rocky, Tony Revolori, Chanel Iman

Dope Music (3:29 minutes) – This is a short feature that pays homage to the music of Dope and its inspiration, one of the most innovative times in recent music history – 90s hip hop culture as well as Malcolm’s punk band “Awreeoh” and we even get to see a small bit of footage of the actors in the studio with Pharrell. If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is.

Appearing in this Feature:
Director/Screenwriter/Executive Producer, Rick Famuyiwa
Executive Producer, Pharrell Williams
Co-Producer, Mimi Valdes
Producer/Narrator, Forest Whitaker
Cast Members, Shameik Moore, A$AP Rocky, Kiersey Clemons

Own Dope on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD today.