Cole Carter (Zac Efron) has dreams of gaining notoriety as a Hollywood DJ and also spends his days and nights hanging out with his buddies while working on a track that he hopes will set the world on fire. An opportunity soon comes knocking when he meets James Reed (Wes Bentley), a veteran DJ who takes the younger DJ under his wing. An obstacle later presents itself along his path to success when we starts to have feelings for his mentor's girlfriend which begins to jeopardize his relationship and the future he was destined to have.
The title for this one probably should have been "We Are Your 1- Dimensionsional Friends". With a story that is about friends, I didn't really care too much for these ones. There's nothing really new or original here. I found them rather annoying and cliché and that they didn't really add anything to the story but that's inconsequential since the story isn't about them. Now about that story. It is a silly story to begin with but it also seemed to be facing an identity crisis. It didn't know whether it wanted to be a coming-of-age story or a party movie. Unfortunately it did not do either well. I found the party scenes quite dull as they consisted primarily of questionable people dancing in clubs to electronic music. The coming-age-part was slightly better since it contained less of Cole's friends despite it being both cheesy and cliché. The parts where we saw him learning about how to be the best were somewhat captivating despite being something I've seen before thousands of times (i.e. Southpaw) and also despite the fact that Wes Bentley's character felt like a caricature of a common mentor. What I didn't like about this film, other than the friend characters, was the story. I found the first half watchable but it fell apart for me during the second half. Without giving anything away, I'll say that there were a few subplots that I felt were unnecessary to the overall story and I found that things ended a little too nicely which did not make sense to me. For a story about overcoming one's environment and making a name out of one's self, I didn't think it did a good job at explaining how one goes about doing that. I'm not saying that it didn't explain this but rather it did off-screen and through a series of implications. The only thing I liked about this film was the music. I was never a fan of electronic music but it was well done here as it showed a lot of creativity and imagination. I have never been a fan of Zac Efron but he at least made this watchable. If I want to see a young person coming-of-age story, I'd see Paper Towns.
Score: 6/10 keithlovesmovies.com
