Eventually realizing that they need to expand if they’re to really be a band, they set their sights on Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), a demure and comely student who’s skilled at playing acoustic guitar and singing. Though Hedvig’s a Christian, something Bobo and Klara find very non-punk, they recruit her via friendship, which she evidently needs. Unlike them, she looks like an actual teenager, but after they hide her figure in baggy punk clothes and shear off her beautiful long blonde hair, she too looks like a boy—a very pretty one.

While most of the film has a loose knit, anecdotal air, dramatic complications arise when the three go off to a nearby town to meet the members of a punk trio they admire. It’s clear they’re hoping for dates rather than musical advice, but they arrive to make the awkward discovery that the band has shed one of its members, so it’s three girls and two boys. After Klara makes a connection with one of the guys, Bobo jealously goes behind her back and tries to sabotage the budding romance.

In real life, or a more dyspeptic and authentic punk rock movie, that interference might lead to the band’s dissolution, if not Sid and Nancy-style mayhem. But "We Are the Best" is not that kind of movie. It’s the happy-face, kids-are-alright punk rock movie, in which the two friends make up after their spat and end up on stage shouting the title’s inane self-affirmation at a roomful of pissed-off provincials.

Moodyson gets spirited, engaging performances from his three young leads, and his directing style, which includes lots of handheld camera and zooming into close-ups of the leads, lends an air of both intimacy and improvisation. It’s very capable and audience-pleasing work, which of course means that nothing about it is very punk-rock.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46wnGaZopp6tbTEZpmeq6Rif3F9kw%3D%3D