We Are Your Friends (2015)

Simply A Masterpiece

Powerful

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

For some this might not miss or skip a beat, others might not see this beating at all. And there will be a few who are totally in sync with the beat (down with it so to speak). But the DJ and his friends who all are living their dream (or are they?), have to go on a journey ... out of their comfort zone.Growing up or evolving and following what your destiny may hold for you, may not be a subject matter that attracts a lot of attention, but it does attract at least those who are fans of Mr. Efron. And while this isn't his strongest performance yet, that will not affect his fans. I was (pleasantly) surprised seeing Emily R. in this one. The movie itself does not hold many surprises though ...

This film makes me wish I were back in LA. I feel like this was the answer to some of the artsy videos we can find here on Youtube. I thought the film was okay, I had higher expectations, NEVER have high expectations.. It's better you go there thinking this film will be okay, and be surprised than thinking it will be amazing and it's just okay. if that makes sense. The one thing that got me in this film, was how I really wanted to go to the gym and work out, run and listen to music. But that's about it. It's about friendship and forbidden love wish I usually like, but I wasn't sure where they were going with everything in this film. Words to describe the film: DJ, Music, Friendship, drugs, booze, workout, artsy. I give it 7 out of 10

A much, much better film than what I ever anticipated. This is a perfectly acceptable film that is in no way represented by what the trailer makes it out to be, especially in its message and ideas. All in all it is a respectable debut from director Max Joseph even though it definitely circles around some very generic territory.Fundametally what the movie does really well is having an organic integration of characters, locations and music. It does understand what its place is, it has noble intentions more or less and so manages to really shape out the characters and give them all a heart felt arch and a beat on screen. That is more than many movies manage to do. Of course a lot of that work is undermined by the fact that many characters are clichés to the point of exhaustion and some decisions and actions they take are absolutely preposterous.Still, I really dug some of the development, especially the relation between Wes Bentely and Zac Efron. It could have really been a dull, boring and uninteresting, but thanks to some committed work from both of them, you end up investing more than you think and it surprised me by the end how much I actually, kind of cared. Moreover the film is shot pretty well, it has a decent music choices that maybe could have been better with a bigger budget and the whole DJing thing is developed really interesting from a visual stand point, unfortunately it never really works 100% and there are multiple moments where you don't really care, but for the most part it was an inventive way of presenting DJing visually.The movie is just brought down by clichés, clichéd characters and a little narrative chaos. There are some story lines that really have no place and could have been replaced by some more intricate narrative for our three main characters rather than the simple, basic storyline they are given.All in all this is a kind of fun time, it only needed some more energy and a little less overall for it to be a good music picture.

I was expecting to detest this movie, and I'm happy to say that I found some enjoyment in We Are Your Friends. I'm not too big on EDM; I love some of it, dislike most of it, but this movie actually painted the genre/scene in an interesting light. They add a human element to the otherwise processed and compressed music, and it's pretty captivating. At least those scenes are. Where the movie fails can be attributed to its title. We Are Your Friends shouldn't have been about friendship or having each others backs or whatever they were trying to go for because that is by far the weakest element of the movie. Zac Efron is great in the lead role, but his friends are complete throwaway characters. I didn't care about any of them. There is one scene near the end where the friend arc almost pays off, but even then it's not worth all the wasted minutes building up these characters when there's a far more interesting story that's going to waste.The story I'm referring to involves Wes Bentley's character James who is a washed up DJ that kind of fell from grace and is now living off royalty checks and he ends up being the person who teaches Cole (Efron) how to make electronic music effective. I really enjoyed Bentley in this role. In fact, the whole trifecta of Efron, Bentley, and Emily Ratajkowski is what made the movie watchable. Bentley being the mentor character who is fighting a lot of inner demons, Efron being the ambitious musician who is hungry for his big break, and Ratajkowski showing off her acting talent as the assistant/girlfriend to Bentley's character who ends up falling for Efron. Even though it sounds like a cliché love triangle, for some reason it works. There's tension between these characters - you care about the friendship between James and Cole, but you also recognize their faults and why Emily's character is torn in her position. They make for some pretty powerful scenes.But again, this potential is muddled underneath a bunch of Hollywood crap. There's a throwaway plot about the gang working for a real estate agency, there's an attempt at a moral to being true to yourself in order to make it big, there is just a bunch of predictable nonsense that clutters this film which is a shame. Believe me, I was not expecting to have any nice things to say about We Are Your Friends, but there is definitely something here. The fact is that the goodness in the movie is a diamond in the rough, and sadly, this diamond isn't worth all the rough.