"Dope": Another nerd winning the Girl of His Dreams. With a lesbian bud, bitcoin, Molly, and some dicks.

 Another Friday, another movie night.  This time I didn't get to choose: it was Dope (2015), featuring Shemeik Moore as Malcolm, an Inglewood, California high schooler with aspirations of getting into Harvard. Why not UCLA?  Don't these filmmakers know that other colleges exist?

I almost insisted that we change movies in the first horribly cliched scene, when Shemeik gazes longingly at the Girl of His Dreams as she walks in slow motion toward her car.  His two buds, Jib and Diggy, gaze at her butt and then congratulate each other, I guess because seeing a girl's butt is a major accomplishment?  Then the trio heads to a record store to look for retro 90s rap albums,  and Diggy congratulates herself on finding one with a lot of naked women on the cover.

Did I mention that Diggy is a girl?  She dresses in masculine clothes, and she is absurdly hetero-horny...I mean lesbian-horny, so most people think that she's a boy.  When they are trying to get into a club, the bouncer says that he's only letting hot girls in, so if any of them show their breasts...and she shows her breasts.  

Diggy and Jib (Tony Revolori) don't have a lot to do.  They dance with girls occasionally, but their main job is to try to convince Malcolm that he should talk to, ask out, kiss, or screw the Girl of His Dreams.

Unfortunately, Malcolm is "a nice guy," and no woman in any movie is ever attracted to a nice guy until the last scene -- although she flirts with him constantly, he's stuck in the friend zone, tutoring her as she studies for the GED and listening to her complain about how much she hates her drug-dealing boyfriend, played by A$AP Rocky. 

So why doesn't she dump him?  He's a bad boy, so her reputation depends on being seen with him.  Besides, he's extraordinarily good in bed.

On to the plot: the trio goes to the Drug-Dealing Boyfriend's birthday party, in the hope of pushing Malcolm into dancing with The Girl.  A gang bursts in and starts shooting everybody.  The trio escape, but the next day they discover that the Boyfriend has hidden a huge quantity of Molly in Malcolm's knapsack.  He's in jail, so he instructs Malcolm to give it to someone named AJ.

AJ isn't home.  While they are waiting, his son, played by Quincy Brown, takes the buds out for chili cheese fries, to give Malcolm the chance to have sex with his naked, absurdly flirtatious sister. So this self-professed "geek" who is unpopular and  constantly bullied also gets hit on by every girl in sight.  I detect an unreliable narrator.

Uh-oh, AJ turns out to be Jacoby, an uber-successful businessman whose letter of recommendation is essential for Malcolm's admission to Harvard!  He orders Malcolm to sell the drugs.  But how?

With the assistance of a slacker played by Blake Anderson, they set up a bitcoin operation and sell the Molly online, branding it as Lily.  

Gay reference: The Slacker has only had anal and oral sex with girls.  He wonders if that makes him technically a virgin, or technically gay.  Neither, dude.  Oral and anal count as sex. 

More after the break

The trio makes a fortune, but it's interfering with their extracurriculars and Malcolm's pursuit of the Girl, so...conflict.  Plus the police show up at the school to search for the drugs that Malcolm is stupidly hiding in his locker -- while he is taking the SAT!  They want out.  

I'll stop there.

Beefcake:  Malcolm masturbating furiously to girls' butts. Some bare chests, notably Ashton Moio as a guy who becomes an advertisement for their product by ripping his shirt off and yelling "How am I supposed to eat my poundcake?"

Gay Characters: Just Diggy.

Homophobia:  None. The bullies and druggies, and gang members are constantly insulting each other and the trio, but they never use gay slurs or call each other women.  

Bitcoin:  Dated, and sort of boring.

My Grade: B