Why do film-makers insist that Zac Efron must have regular shirtless epiphanies in the shower? We Are Your Friends contains two of these special moments, as Efron, who plays the 23-year-old DJ Cole, has profound thoughts and — I quote the press pack — “searches for his own, signature sound that is propelling him forward toward a future he alone can create.” Quite.
Cole is a Valley Boy who wants to make it big in the glamorous electronic music scene in Los Angeles but is trapped promoting tacky dance clubs with three waster childhood friends. Then he meets sophisticated super-DJ James (Wes Bentley) who encourages him to use his studio and create his own sounds. We also see Cole DJ-ing at a topless-bottomless-blinging pool party, where we learn that 128 beats per minute — like a long-distance-run heartbeat — is the optimum speed to fill the dance floor.
As part of Cole’s Cinderella-style social upgrade, he makes a play for James’s beautiful Stanford dropout “assistant” Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski), allowing the freshman director Max Joseph to make a montage of the couple skipping hand in hand through Las Vegas, to add to other montages of Cole’s sound sample sources — coins, phones, nail guns, buzzing pylons — as he tries to create the ultimate track.
By now, the film is embarrassingly uncool, as white boys use rap language and physically fight over where to buy the best sushi in LA. In the week that NWA’s Straight Outta Compton debuts, there is only one music movie to see and Efron’s effort is not it.
Max Joseph, 15, 96min