{"id":17631,"date":"2015-12-04T23:51:57","date_gmt":"2015-12-05T04:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=17631"},"modified":"2015-12-04T23:51:57","modified_gmt":"2015-12-05T04:51:57","slug":"we-are-your-friends-2015-dvd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/04\/we-are-your-friends-2015-dvd\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are Your Friends (2015) (DVD)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wayf\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I really like Zac Efron. I have nothing particularly against him. He\u2019s a nice looking guy with some chops to him when pushed hard enough by a competent director. When he\u2019s really just asked to flash his looks around and literally do nothing, we get \u201cWe Are Your Friends,\u201d one of the stupidest, most forgettable movies of 2015. I\u2019m glad I\u2019m not the only person who felt this way about the film, as it was one of the bigger flops of the year. \u201cWe Are Your Friends\u201d has no substance to it, and pretends to be about something, when it really isn\u2019t. Deep down it\u2019s a remake of \u201cSaturday Night Fever<\/a>\u201d and fails to capture any of the substance and complexity that John Badham\u2019s masterpiece obtained.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When it\u2019s trying to be a stern melodrama about achieving your dreams and igniting your passion, it comes off as inadvertently laughable. There\u2019s the climax particularly where Cole Carter finally gets a shot at the big time and we\u2019re supposed to be rooting for him because he\u2019s so engaged in his audience he\u2019s dripping sweat, and dancing with his fans. It\u2019s moronic, when it should be something of a triumph for this character. There are just no interesting characters, and no fascinating conflicts. It\u2019s just a one dimensional good looking guy who drowns himself in his hobby that he wants to transform in to his career, and can\u2019t figure out his friends are holding him back.<\/p>\n

He hangs around three truly despicable men with nothing to offer the movie beside broad depictions of the lower class as boorish morons, while Efron\u2019s character Cole slogs around making music, hanging around with Wes Bentley\u2019s character Jerry, and falling for a relatively vapid woman. Granted, Emily Ratajkowski is absolutely stunning, but her character Sophie isn\u2019t written well enough for audiences to understand why anyone would fight over her. Through and through, \u201cWe Are Your Friends\u201d values style over substance, trying to paint a unique world, and failing colossally. All the subtitles, and big splashes of bold letters on the screen, as well as a perfunctory animated sequence, fail to convey why this world is so special to Cole.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just a lot of really good looking people bashing in to one another and whining about how their lives didn\u2019t turn out how they wanted. How heartbreaking. The only salvageable aspects of the movie are the supporting roles by Wes Bentley and Jon Bernthal. Bernthal has a strong screen presence for a character that is abruptly written off by the third act with no resolution, while Bentley plays the older gent struggling with a life of regret, despite barely being in his forties. \u201cWe Are Your Friends\u201d is a vapid, tedious and tonally uneven experience that just riffs on \u201cSaturday Night Fever,\u201d and ends without drawing a single interesting idea. And let\u2019s face it, Efron is just not Travolta.<\/p>\n

Featured on the DVD is a throwaway seven minute Behind the Scenes, with interviews with the cast and crew, all of whom shed more insight on the EDM culture in under ten minutes than the whole movie does in ninety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really like Zac Efron. I have nothing particularly against him. He\u2019s a nice looking guy with some chops to him when pushed hard enough by a competent director. When he\u2019s really just asked to flash his looks around and literally do nothing, we get \u201cWe Are Your Friends,\u201d one of the stupidest, most forgettable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[240,302,700,766,874,1170],"class_list":["post-17631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-crime","tag-drama","tag-musical","tag-performance","tag-romance","tag-w"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17633,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17631\/revisions\/17633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}