The lighter side of the California drought is that the relative lack of vegetation has led to fewer incidents of curmudgeons spouting, “get off my lawn!” The darker side is that San Fernando Valley punks now have even more freedom to hone electronic music skills as we see in this next offering: We Are Your Friends.
You are?! Aw. Isn’t that sweet?
Zac Efron took little time in reminding us he has a musical side; he’s the local spin-master in a quartet of ne’er-do-wells. Do anybody still say “ne’er-do-wells?” Screw it; I’m bringing it back. Actually, for punks, all these four really wanna do is deal, spin and score; they’re not into property destruction. Doesn’t matter. Cole (Efron) is the only one with a future; he’s real good at reading heartbeats and quickly gets himself involved in a love triangle with Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski) and the local legend of push-button dance music, James (Wes Bentley).
We Are Your Friends is really interested in telling us the science of how to work a crowd — diagrams, flowcharts, the works. I’m reasonably sure I could DJ a low-key party scene after this tutorial. Of course, the research heavily conflicts with the lack thereof later on: Sophie is a Stanford drop out. Money issues. Stanford has become synonymous with Harvard and Yale as poorly-written movie universal indicators of “I’m smart.” Of course, the film writers proved not quite as bright as their characterization – Stanford, like Harvard and Yale, is now free for students of low-income families. Yeah, it might have been a good idea to incorporate that in your screenplay – or at least choose a different school (I hear Harvard and Yale are pretty good — oops).
While James is drunk in Vegas, Sophie and Cole hookup Under the Electric Sky – which, admittedly, I only included to link a cheap self-reference. Truth? I like it when movies overlap each other; it adds a distinctly paper-thin layer of depth to both films.
Resolutely determined to discuss the science of crowd exuberance, We Are Your Friends serves as an excellent companion piece to late summer peer Straight Outta Compton. And, for all it’s flaws, it’s awesome what a companion piece it is – Compton is good, WAYF is bad; Compton deals mostly with black people, WAYF mostly with white; Compton is inner city, WAYF is San Fernando Valley; Compton describes the music that reflects reality, WAYF describes music that lets one escape reality; Compton focuses
on the relationships within the musical creation, WAYF focuses on the relationships that span outside it. I could go on; there’s a lot more here. Take my word that watching these films back-to-back, assuming you can stomach WAYF, is an eerie mirror-reflective study.
We Are Your Friends is a huge step backwards for Zac Efron. Zac lives in the Daniel Radcliffe/Robert Pattinson world where name recognition outweighs talent; this is a dangerous place to be in as it often swallows up young actors and actresses. Any idea where Macaulay Culkin is these days? Didn’t think so. Zac has done a pretty good job in the past few years separating himself from the music portion of his Mr. America entry thus establishing a star in the romantic lead sense with The Lucky One and That Awkward Moment; while neither of these films were good, they do announce Zac as an actor, not a gimmick Disney studios unleashed when it got bored one day. In We Are Your Friends, Zac goes back to his musical roots and fails, which is now a double failure – you leaned on the music instead of going away from it and now it’s hard to picture you as either romantic lead or band hero. It will very interesting to see how he tries to recover from this disaster.
And We Are Your Friends is not far above disaster level. It’s hard finding somebody to care about in the film; it’s harder still caring about things the characters care about. If establishing your own artistic merit is all about creating a mishmash of personal input, then a computer could do it, and do it easily and more efficiently. Perhaps it did.
♪As the sun beats
On a gold and hot El Lay afternoon
A poor white trash child aspires
In the Valley
And his mama cries
“Do your chores” one thing that she don’t need
Is another foul-mouthed punk to sass
In the Valley
SoCal, don’t you understand
That kid needs a record deal
Or he’ll grow to be a dope-dealin’ perp some day
Take a look at his demo, it’s free
Played on the latest iPhone v.3
Do we simply turn our heads
And check that rival act
Well the record turns
And a hungry side show with homie bros
Spins in the club as his dope beat flows
In the Valley♫
Rated R, 96 Minutes
D: Max Joseph
W: Max Joseph and Meaghan Oppenheimer
Genre: Electronicrap
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Aspiring spin artists
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Cranky old people
♪ Parody inspired by “In the Ghetto”
