We the Party (2012)

24% of critics liked it
(17 reviews)
76% of users liked it
(2,350 ratings)

A revealing look at contemporary youth culture, writer-director Mario Van Peebles' We the Party shows teenagers as they are, not as adults would like them to be. Set amidst the latest trends in music, dance and fashion, We the Party is a colorful, cutting-edge comedy set in an ethnically diverse Los… More A revealing look at contemporary youth culture, writer-director Mario Van Peebles' We the Party shows teenagers as they are, not as adults would like them to be. Set amidst the latest trends in music, dance and fashion, We the Party is a colorful, cutting-edge comedy set in an ethnically diverse Los Angeles high school during America's first black president. The film focuses on five friends as they deal with romance, money, prom, college, sex, bullies, facebook, fitting in, standing out, and finding themselves. Evoking such classic teen comedies as The Breakfast Club and House Party but with an attitude and style all its own, We the Party captures the hopes, confusion, challenges and dreams of today's teenagers as they plunge headlong into an uncertain future. -- (C) Official Site

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Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 44 min.
Directed By: Mario Van Peebles
Written By: Mario Van Peebles
Genres: Comedy

In Theaters: Apr 6, 2012 Limited
Studio: Xlrator Media

Critic Reviews

Scott Bowles, USA Today
Every time it dabbles in real-world teen issues like sex and drugs, it returns to a fanciful high school where kids quote Nietzsche and play acoustic guitar on lunch breaks.
Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News
Mario Van Peebles' self-produced project comes frustratingly close to his high-minded aims.
Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
Heavy-handed teen drama mixes moralizing and partying to uneven effect.
Kyle Smith, New York Post
A good-natured high school dramedy that borrows from many others...
Stephanie Merry, Washington Post
With the raunch of "American Pie" and the heart of an after-school special, the comedy turns out to be a lot less than the sum of its parts.
Neil Genzlinger, New York Times
Van Peebleses ... populate the movie, and all are serviceable enough as actors; it would be nice to see them in less earnest, more original material.
Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com
[VIDEO] There are a few moments during writer/director Mario Van Peebles's overly didactic high school drama when you can almost glimpse the good film buried beneath all the artifice.
David Noh, Film Journal International
Initially promising teen comedy-drama, featuring African-American kids not in the ghetto for once, soon undermines itself in a welter of clichés and empty gloss.
Matt Pais, RedEye
Joining two overweight characters in a relationship just to make a joke about them enjoying an all-you-can-eat buffet hardly qualifies as progressive, intellectual comedy.
Alison Willmore, AV Club
How to resist a film in which one kid taunts another by quoting Mo'Nique's monologue from Precious?
Andrew Schenker, Time Out New York
It's an uneasy mixture of crude yukking and mixed-message uplift that satisfies on neither level.
Kam Williams, AALBC.com
Unfolding like a 21st Century update of African-American coming-of-age classics House Party (1990) and Love Jones (1997), We the Party might very well come to serve as the seminal adventure capturing the angst and aspirations of the Millennial Generation.
Diego Costa, Slant Magazine
While We the Party can be insensitive, or blind, to the misogyny and homophobia of the general culture (the token gay teen is a finger-snapping, head-bobbing fashionista), it takes the issues of race and class quite seriously.