WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS (2015)

Genre: Drama
Director: Max Joseph
Cast: Zac Efron, Emily Ratajkowski, Shiloh Fernandez, Wes Bentley, Alicia Coppola, Jon Abrahams, Jonny Weston, Jon Bernthal, Jacqui Holland, Rebecca Forsythe
Runtime: 1 hr 36 mins
Rating: M18 (Coarse Language and Nudity)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: http://wayf-movie.com

Opening Day: 24 September 2015

Synopsis: “We Are Your Friends” is about what it takes to find your voice. Set in the world of electronic music and Hollywood nightlife, an aspiring 23-year-old DJ named Cole (Efron) spends his days scheming with his childhood friends and his nights working on the one track that will set the world on fire. All of this changes when he meets a charismatic but damaged older DJ named James (Bentley), who takes him under his wing. Things get complicated, however, when Cole starts falling for James’ much younger girlfriend, Sophie (Ratajkowski). With Cole’s forbidden relationship intensifying and his friendships unraveling, he must choose between love, loyalty, and the future he is destined for.

Movie Review:

Zac Efron stars as Cole, an aspiring DJ trying to find the one song that would be his ticket to fame and success in Hollywood. He has three other good-for-nothing friends – Mason (Johnny Weston), Squirrel (Alex Shaffer), and Ollie (Shiloh Fernandez), who are all about the young-Hollywood lifestyle, i.e. sex, money and drugs. They live in the “San Fernando Valley”, the ghetto of California and have grandiose dreams about making it big with as little effort as possible. They make their living out of promoting club nights where Cole spins and selling drugs to college kids looking for an escape. In his daily dealings, Cole meets popular local DJ James Reed (Wes Bentley) who epitomizes everything Cole aspires to be. James eventually takes Cole under his wing and helps him understand what individuality is in Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and why it is important for Cole to find his own distinct sound. Everything is fine and dandy till Cole falls in love with James’ assistant/girlfriend Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski) and he’s left to make a tough decision between what his heart wants and his career aspirations. This movie has all the right (albeit cliché) ingredients to be the perfect end-of-summer flick for the over-20-under-30 crowd. It examines the popular EDM culture and almost manages to hit all the right notes to deliver a vibrant, feel-good film.

Let’s talk plot. The story for We Are Your Friends is pretty straightforward and very, very predictable. But it is delivered with such charm that you almost don’t mind it. Cole is often stuck facing the dilemma that many young adults face and making mistakes that alter his grand plans for life. For one, Cole struggles to find his own voice in his music and among his friends. He often follows the crowd (his friends), until he meets James. And even with James, he never asserts himself as an individual, often enamored by James’ abilities and advice that he never realizes that James himself is a fraud in many ways. Cole also struggles between choosing the comfortable, luxurious life and the morally right thing to do. This struggle is not only apparent in his personal life (choosing his mentor or his chance at love), but also in his professional life.

The movie tries to condense these layers of young adult angst and confusion to make it palatable and enjoyable for the audience. Sometimes, this resulted in the movie feeling a little truncated in places. The plot points could have been better illustrated. There were other inconsistencies too – I wasn’t very clear whether Cole was into Sophie out of pure lust, since her character was one dimensional and she didn’t have much of a personality or a story. I’m still unsure if it was Emily Ratajkowski’s bad acting or if it was newbie director Max Joseph’s call to dull Sophie’s presence in the film. Instead, Joseph chooses to focus a lot more on the aesthetics – bold text and “fun info-graphics” to explain the background of each character and a good looking cast against the beautiful backdrop of California. The cinematography by Brett Pawlak was also excellent and a lot of effort went into trying to get the visuals to complement the vibrant soundtrack of the film. A particularly interesting and visually stunning scene was in the middle of the film where Cole tried to explain the “science” of music and how it moves the body and the heart. Overall, it was a creative marriage between Pawlak and Joseph that worked in favour of the film. While the treatment of visual accessories could have been more consistent and less “try-hard”, creative risks were taken. It compensated for the predictable plot and provided for many memorable moments. Joseph’s observations about the EDM culture were also incredibly astute.

However, there really isn’t much to say about the acting in this film, probably because there wasn’t a lot of acting required. The lifestyle portrayed in the film is probably something these young Hollywood twenty-something actors are more than familiar with. None of them looked out of place. Beyond that, the plot didn’t really have many emotional moments for the cast to show off their acting prowess, so there were no standout moments. Both Zac Efron and Wes Bentley had the most acting to do and committed to their roles fairly well. Emily Ratajkowski felt uncomfortable to watch in most scenes and would have probably done better if she had fewer lines to remember.

All in all, I felt that We Are Your Friends is still a better young-adult indie film than Sophie Coppola’s Spring Breakers.  This is probably not a popular opinion but I’ll say it anyway. It had just the right amount of goofiness, cliché, grit and colour to round off this year’s summer film releases.

Movie Rating:

(This one probably only appeals to a niche crowd. To the twenty-somethings out there, let go of your inhibitions, judgment and just enjoy the film)

Review by Aishwarya Kumar