Film review: We Are Your Friends - All that glitters

We Are Your Friends taps into the psyche of young, self-made celebrities living on the cusp of anonymity

Back in February, YouTube celebrated its 10th anniversary. The website has firmly established itself as the leading video content provider of our times. It is, for better or worse, the first point of contact for a range of topics, be it DIY matters or cuddly cat videos. And with YouTube, there come the YouTubers. No matter how one finds these online stars and their make-up tutorials, vlogs or follow-me-arounds, no one can deny the fact that they have amassed a devoted fan base, which regularly shares, likes and comments on their videos.

We Are Your Friends, a new film by first-time feature filmmaker Max Joseph, is not about YouTube per se, but it is about that very generation of YouTubers, Snapchatters, Instagrammers and Viners who dream of making it big with their next video, picture, or six-second clip. One of them is Cole (Zac Efron), an aspiring DJ who lives on the wrong side of Los Angeles. He promotes nightclubs where established DJs perform with his best friends and he sees himself in their position, in the future. Luck is on his side as an older DJ, James Reed (Wes Bentley), takes Cole under his wing to teach him the ins and outs of the electronic music scene.

What starts as a buddy-comedy (Cole and his friends — a budget version of Entourage) quickly morphs into a love triangle when Reed’s girlfriend Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski) takes centre stage and grows close to Cole. Reed is an unfaithful, alcoholic has-been and with Cole, Sophie finds a kindred spirit. Sparks fly and there is tension when Reed eventually finds out that his protégé and his muse are involved.

The film starts off with certain visually inventive touches that don’t really add anything to the story but are interesting to look at anyway. For example, a drug-fuelled hallucination of Cole done in rotoscopic animation is simply there because it looks cool, not because it is necessarily required for the narrative. This point sums up the film nicely because while We Are Your Friends is not a brilliant film, it taps into the psyche of these young, self-made celebrities, who live on the cusp of anonymity and stardom (online, this is a fine line) and prefer flashiness to profundity.

The big takeaway of We Are Your Friends is that all three protagonists are on form here. Zac Efron, who has through his last few films shed the High School Musical-image, anchors the film with a mature performance. For Emily Ratajkowski, who had a small role in Gone Girl and featured in Robin Thicke’s controversial music video Blurred Lines, this should lead to bigger and better offers. Wes Bentley is so underrated and here he plays a difficult role, which could have easily been botched by lesser actors, with aplomb.

And the title? It’s the characters speaking directly to their fans. To the millions of followers on their social media profiles (interestingly, some Vine celebrities also feature briefly in the opening act of the film) who become their friends merely by clicking the mouse and not through real-life interactions. Welcome to 2015.



Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, September 20^th, 2015.