We Are Your Friends

Come on, Wes ... you're going to make us watch

"American Beauty" again?!

Grade: C –

Director: Max Joseph

Starring: Zac Efron, Emily Ratajkowski, Wes Bentley, Shiloh Fernandez, Alex Shaffer, Jonny Weston and Joey Rudman

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 36 min.

The Scarface poster hanging on the bedroom wall of Cole Carter (Zac Efron) is more than decoration in We Are Your Friends. Swapping the South Florida drug trade for the SoCal electronic dance music (EDM) scene, the 23-year-old Cole is our baby-faced Tony Montana, an up-and-coming DJ hoping to graduate from spinning in LA clubs for free drinks to becoming rich and famous. Cole is mentored by a successful but burned-out DJ, James Reed (Wes Bentley). Meanwhile, Cole has eyes for James’ live-in girlfriend/assistant Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski, filling the Michelle Pfeiffer part).

Cole also has his quartet of bros, who wile away their days partying, ingesting illicit substances and hoping to get out of the San Fernando Valley. They get by thanks to the occasional house-cleaning gig and working the phones for a shady foreclosure shark (Jon Bernthal).

This feature film debut by writer-director Max Joseph is an on-the-nose perusal of today’s Valley of lost dreams, littered with underwater homes and unemployed would-be actors. However, it’s also the movie equivalent of Red Bull and AXE body spray, with its too-cool rendering of youthful exuberance at odds with the milieu’s underlying emptiness.

Wait, wasn’t this film supposed to delve into the EDM scene, popularized by the recent widespread acclaim of DJs like Skrillex and Calvin Harris? Unfortunately, any such exploration is few and far between here. Bentley transcends this admittedly thin script, lacquering complexity onto a two-dimensional role by portraying James as a skilled but boozy talent at odds with his mainstream celebrity. The byplay between Cole and James briefly pulls back the curtain on both the mechanics and subculture of EDM.

But while EDM lore says that the ideal DJ track of 128 beats-per-minute synchronizes neatly with a dancer’s accelerated heartbeat, We Are Your Friends never seems to break a sweat. For a film with the chutzpah to track the plotline to Scarface and a few dozen similar coming-of-age flicks—Saturday Night Fever, for example—it doesn’t have the courage to retain any sort of tragic or even bittersweet denouement, notwithstanding the ornamental death of an underwritten character. Everyone bro-hugs it out as any character conflicts evaporate into an air of chest-thumping optimism. Cole cribs his (rather underwhelming) One Big Track from his ambient everyday. A single mom even gets to keep her home.

“Imitation is suicide,” James warns Cole. If so, then We Are Your Friends is virtually DOA.

Win Win

Finally...Paul Giamatti has come BACK...
to another quirky indie comedy

Grade: B +

Director: Tom McCarthy

Starring: Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan, Alex Shaffer, Jeffrey Tambor, Bobby Cannavale, and Burt Young

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 46 min.

We first glimpse Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) in Win Win huffing through a morning job: exercise ordered by his doctor to combat chronic stress. Abby, Mike’s daughter, asks where Daddy is.

“He’s running,” answers his wife Jackie (Amy Ryan). “From what?” responds Abby, implying far more than she realizes.

As much acclaim as Tom McCarthy earns for his screenplays, his reputation as an actor’s director is just as deserved. In The Station Agent, McCarthy’s directorial debut, he helmed a terrific ensemble cast that included Patricia Clarkson, Michelle Williams, and Bobby Cannavale, and made a star out of Peter Dinklage. Richard Jenkins garnered an Oscar nomination in McCarthy’s sophomore effort, The Visitor.

McCarthy, already a veteran character actor at age 45, returns to his personal roots in Win Win, a winsome seriocomedy set (and partly filmed) in McCarthy’s hometown of New Providence, N.J. It is McCarthy’s most accessible yet subtly subversive film to date, one that manages to both celebrate the virtues of middle-class America while laying bare the unpleasant underbelly of human frailties.

Mike is a beleaguered small-town attorney with a law practice and office furnace both on the verge of breaking down. Mike’s me-time is spent moonlighting as a wrestling coach for New Providence High, although the team is suffering a losing streak as pronounced as their manager’s personal travails.

When the state moves to institutionalize Leo Poplar (Burt Young), Mike’s elderly, court-appointed client, Mike asks to the court to assign him to be the dementia sufferer’s guardian. Mike’s motives are far from altruistic, because instead of fulfilling his promise to help Leo live out his last days at home, Mike deposits both Leo into the nearest assisted living facility and the $1,500 monthly check Mike receives for being Leo’s guardian.

When Kyle (Alex Shaffer), Leo’s troubled teenage grandson, arrives on Leo’s doorstep looking for a place to live, Mike’s consternation over this potentially disrupting event turns into glee once Mike and his buddy Terry (Cannavale) discover that Kyle is a wrestling savant. Mike helps Kyle enroll in school so he can join the wrestling team. Kyle also moves in with Mike and Jackie, a Jersey girl who long ago embraced the responsibilities of domestic life but is still prone to occasionally flash her Bon Jovi ankle tattoo.

McCarthy’s script is smart sans the smart-aleckiness of many Sundance-era indie comedies. He does not saddle Mike with the traditional movie lawyer stereotypes – instead, he’s a regular working guy struggling to make ends meet who falters under life’s pressures and expectations.

That’s not to say Mike is a victim – indeed, Win Win suffers (almost fatally) from a bout of Rain Man syndrome. No matter the tidiness of McCarthy’s ending and Mike’s eventual road-to-Damascus moments, he begrudgingly makes time to even meet with Leo until learning of the windfall awaiting his guardian. He treats Kyle as a nuisance needing only a bus ticket out of town before discovering the boy’s proclivity for pinfalls.

Win Win survives these quibbles because of its cast and McCarthy’s handling of them. Giamatti gives his most genuine, organic performance since Sideways – he doesn’t play the role as much as he imbibes it. The director finds ways to exploit Ryan and Jeffrey Tambor, who plays Mike’s business partner and assistant coach, without allowing their distinctive personalities to overwhelm their scenes. Shaffer, himself a former N.J. high school wrestling standout, so successfully balances Kyle’s emotional tumult with charm and intellectual depth you’d scarcely believe the newcomer is making his feature film debut. And, Cannavale is the best he’s been since, well, The Station Agent.

Win Win has a set-up straight out of a Coen Bros. movie – one can only imagine the comeuppance Mike would in their sadistic hands. However, McCarthy treats both his characters and the audience with exceeding care and respect. The film is heartfelt but not sappy, sober but not cynical. To borrow the vernacular of the day, Win Win – and its talented writer-director – is winning.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://goo.gl/aLA4n