Dope (Blu-ray)

Looking for a comedy that's just energetic and goofy and flat-out fun? Keep an eye out for Dope, which manages to put a lighthearted spin on the adventures of Inglewood kids who are trying to avoid being shot and killed by drug dealers. A hip-hop update of Risky Business for the era of Bitcoin and viral memes, Rick Famuyiwa's fourth feature focuses on Malcolm (Shameik Moore), a high school geek who's intent on getting into Harvard. His attempt to broker a liaison between a local dealer (A$AP Rocky) and a studious neighborhood girl (Zoë Kravitz) results in a series of misadventures that find him and his dorky friends in possession of a large quantity of MDMA and pursued by gun-wielding gangstas, forcing them to improvise a solution using their expertise with the Internet. Dope is so current in many respects that it risks looking dated down the road  people won't be posting image macros featuring text in the Impact font forever  but Famuyiwa craftily deflects the issue by making his characters obsessed with the 90s, to the point where Malcolm even sports a hi-top fade and dresses like he's on In Living Color. The film does have a message, involving the desire not to be categorized and dismissed due to ones background or interests, but nothing so breezy could possibly come off as preachy.  Mike D'Angelo, The Dissolve