‘We Are Your Friends’ Film Review: Predictable But Pleasing EDM Adventure

What is EDM (electronic dance music) but a scrapbook of random sounds set to stock beats? That is what We Are Your Friends teaches us about artistry in the modern world – that if you set the beat at this level you can actually control the anatomical functions of an entire crowd. DJ Cole (Zac Efron) likes to start the crowd at 125 beats per minute, just to sync up with the average heart rate and take the wheel from there.

Ok, maybe that’s not what the filmmakers meant, but close enough. It’s also about how the right set of friends can exploit your best qualities and send you places you couldn’t get to on your own.

Cole is a DJ living in the pool house of his childhood friend’s parent’s home in the San Fernando Valley. There are four of them altogether, and the scar on Efron’s forehead is supposed to convince viewers that he’s a tough kid from the streets. Mason (Jonny Weston) is a scrappy, small-time club promoter who lives in the pool house with Cole and pretends to be his manager. The four friends are constantly taking a run at getting over the Hollywood Hills and escaping the valley for good. Usually, they end up getting sushi instead, which is apparently what the valley is known for.

A small bit of hope is cast on Cole’s aimless world when he attends, that’s right, an EDM show at a local club. This is where he meets Sophie (Emily Ratakowski) for the first time. What is it called when two people look at each other from across the room and everything seems to stop? Whatever it’s called, it happens here in the film. She asks him if he’s a club promoter; he stumbles on his words and she walks away.

Next, Cole is taken under the wing of famous DJ James Reed (Wes Bentley). Turns out Sophie is Reed’s personal assistant/girlfriend and walking, talking cliche. Reed is a hero turned narcissistic cheater. Cole simultaneously realizes that while his real friends will never get him anywhere, the friends that will are also crazy. His relationship with his childhood friends comes to a head when they party too hard and wake up on the living room floor to find that Squirrel, a character whose sole narrative purpose is to die, is in fact dead.

Cole eventually sheds his childhood companions. In a move that seems more out of self-respect and pity towards Reed, Cole apologizes to his mentor for sleeping with his supermodel-hot girlfriend in a Vegas hotel.

This wins back Cole’s place as the opening act for Reed at Summerfest. He becomes what he always wanted to become, and gets Emily Ratakowski as a girlfriend.

The film missed it’s mark if it was aiming to put the sounds of EDM into a form more palatable for the eyes. But the musical score was excellent, nonetheless. Ratakowski gives a decent performance. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like much was expected of her from filmmakers other than to cause sexual tension. Wes Bentley stands out as the best performer in the film with his ability to cut below the surface and illustrate the dark effects of depression and substance abuse on the creative mind. Though full of predictable plot curves and transparent narrative tools, the film does have substance in terms of dialogue, performance and is aesthetically pleasing on many fronts.

Article by Mark Hallum