A film about DJing and electronic music production is off to an immediately problematic start, because song selection and beat matching isn’t fun to watch, and neither is sitting in front of a laptop trying to hatch a banger. On the other hand, what the increasingly tiresome and rapidly overlapping worlds of superstar DJs and EDM have in common is globetrotting celebrity and unbridled hedonism. Barely acknowledging either, We Are Your Friends is instead the rote sort of underdog tale that Hollywood rolls out to cash in on every fad from punk rock to skateboarding.
Zac Efron’s a Valley boy trying to make it to the right side of the Hollywood Hills. All it takes to make it, he explains in a frequently embarrassing, earnest voiceover, is one song. Though, as we learn from We Are Your Friends, it’s more accurately a mix of coincidence and cliché as he’s taken under the wing of a top gun DJ, whose lifestyle – and girlfriend – Efron’s character quickly takes a liking to.
The only wish fulfilment on offer – which itself is really the only reason to watch this film – is getting into the pants of said girlfriend, one Emily ‘Blurred Lines’ Ratajkowski. Oh, and getting to stand on a windy stage in front of thousands of daytime partygoers who have inexplicably been patiently waiting in absolute silence to be wowed by a DJ none of them have heard of, who plays his own material, also never heard by anyone previously.
With no real stakes, except shoehorning in some utterly unearned life and death and real estate (!) drama, We Are Your Friends somehow manages to bore, sadly coming up short of being so bad it’s good. Instead, like most of the musical culture it idolises, it is sub-par.
‘We Are Your Friends’ movie times
