Review: We Are Your Friends

For what it’s worth, I was a part-time club DJ from 1981until 2000. Although I hung up my headphones just before the advent of the laptop-era it was with more than passing interest I penciled in We Are Your Friends as a film to be checked out. Here was a movie purporting to cover the rave culture–replete with all the high-tech gadgetry that replaced my beloved Technics 1200 turntables. Hell, it even had Wes Bentley (American Beauty) in a supporting role. Granted, the title made no sense going in (that doesn’t change after seeing the film) and the usually annoying Zac Efton was playing the lead.

All told, I wish there had been a warning along the lines of “We are your friends. Don’t waste time on this flick.” Director Max Joseph (producer, MTV’s Catfish), who has made documentary shorts on EDM (for the uninitiated: electronic dance music) does an adequate if unspectacular job of conveying the buzz inherent in laying down a mix that shakes a crowd to its foundation. The problem is there’s a screamingly pedestrian story here populated with characters as thinly conceived and written as the plot.

Cole (Zefrin) hangs around with a bunch of loser roommates, one of whom is nicknamed “Squirrel.” Then he meets James (Bentley) a washed-up formerly big time L.A. DJ who for some inexplicable reason (plot facilitation?) lets Cole hang around his hotshot recording studio. Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski, the best thing about this film) is James’s younger, very appealing assistant/girlfriend. It doesn’t take much to figure out where this is going and with the help of some Ecstasy or some such, she and Cole make nasty.

In a nod to Bentley’s acting skill, it isn’t clear whether James will kill Cole or shrug his shoulders when he inevitable finds out. The film has it both ways, as it does seemingly glorifying drug use only to slip in an 11th hour scene abruptly condemning it. I wish I could say all is well as long as we stick to the DJ stuff but that would be as big a lie as screenwriters Joseph and Meaghan Openheimer’s credibility on telling a decent story.

An animated drug sequence, a few half-decent tracks and a heavy-handed script….1 star (out of 5)