Synopsis
Young Cole Carter dreams of hitting the big time as a Hollywood disc jockey, spending his days and nights hanging with buddies and working on the one track that will set the world on fire. Opportunity comes knocking when he meets James Reed, a charismatic DJ who takes the 23-year-old under his wing. Soon, his seemingly clear path to success gets complicated when he starts falling for his mentor's girlfriend, jeopardizing his new friendship and the future he seems destined to fulfill.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Zac EfronCole
- Wes BentleyJames
- Emily RatajkowskiSophie
- Jonny WestonMason
- Shiloh FernandezOllie
- Alex ShafferSquirrel
- Jon BernthalPaige Morrell
- Alicia CoppolaMrs. Romero
- Wiley M. PickettCarl
- Jon AbrahamsNicky
Recommendations
- 80
Time Out
[An] enormously fun late-summer surprise. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
We Are Your Friends is predictable, sometimes tacky, but the energy is unflagging, the eye candy plentiful and writer-director Max Joseph (making his feature debut after hosting MTV’s Catfish) brings sincerity and a skillfully modulated sweetness to the material. - 63
Slant Magazine
As Zac Efront's Cole tiptoes away from his past, the film keenly observes a character who doesn't know how to secure his future, or his identity. - 60
Empire
Zac Efron makes a convincing bid for movie stardom — and Ratajkowski proves she’s more than just a pretty face — in this flawed but fitfully entertaining film, even if it all goes a bit Pete Tong at the end. - 60
Village Voice
Remake The Graduate today, and an adult might corner Benjamin Braddock and whisper, "Startups." Debut director Max Joseph gives that a good shot, though the result — the EDM-fueled, drug-laced dream-crusher We Are Your Friends — is so sweaty and silly people may not notice. - 50
Variety
We Are Your Friends” has its heart in the right place, and it’s shrewd and cuddly enough to get a few likes. But it would be an infinitely better movie if it sustained the sort of trancelike sonic ecstasy that turns fans into fanatics. - 50
The Playlist
Ultimately too busy fracturing his story’s focus and indulging in gimmicky textual graphics to really tap into either Hollywood’s or electronica’s magnetic appeal, Joseph’s debut proves to be a film with mood to spare but nothing much to say. - 50
Chicago Sun-Times
Talk about a mediocre mash-up. Much of We Are Your Friends plays like an Electronic Dance Music update of a very good John Travolta movie — “Saturday Night Fever” — with a liberal sprinkling of plot elements from a quite terrible Tom Cruise movie called “Cocktail.”
