Advisor forcing to publish paper in high profile journal
Everyone should be so lucky to have an advisor who pushes them to excel and to aspire to the highest standards of achievement. Really, I don't see why your friend is complaining -- he should just go ahead and submit the paper to the high-profile journal.
Moreover, your friend's advisor, whether he published in the journal before or not, is considerably more qualified than your friend to judge the chances of the paper to be accepted to the journal. If the advisor thinks that's where the paper should be submitted, your friend would in all likelihood be foolish to disagree, especially since the worst that can happen is the paper will get rejected, probably sooner rather than later.
The only exception to this advice is in the bizarre situation in which the advisor is clearly delusional. In that case, your friend has much bigger problems and should probably look for a different advisor, not because of the small and self-correcting problem with the journal but because having an advisor who is so delusional and has such poor judgment does not bode well for your friend's eventual success in his research.
Most answers/comments seem to have the philosophy that "there is nothing to lose by submitting to the top journals, so go for it". I would like to offer a different perspective.
There are costs to every journal submission.
Time spent formatting the manuscript to fit the journal. This sometimes requires relatively minor changes such as formatting references, but might involve more significant effort such as adapting the length to fit a word limit, or altering the focus of the introduction. A lot of the very top journals have quite specific style requirements that are very different to other journals.
Time waiting for a response. At least if it is a desk reject, this will be quick. If it's a rejection after reviews, then as Bartosz points out, at least you will get some good feedback. But the wait can be important at certain stages in a scientific career. One paper can make a big difference to a grad student's CV.
Potential (but often very real) emotional cost of (possibly repeated) rejections.
Costs to the system. If everyone adopts a policy of always submitting to the highest journals, editors become swamped and even more likely just to reject on sight. (Yes, I know, it will still happen because of the Tragedy of the Commons).
These costs need to weighed against the potential benefits if the paper is accepted, which of course are large, but far from guaranteed in the case of high-ranking journals.
Therefore, I don't think it is as simple as saying "you might as well try, you've got nothing to lose". There comes a point where the chance of acceptance drops so low that it is not worth sinking the above costs into an effort that is very unlikely to succeed.
Notice that the costs listed above are much reduced or absent for the supervisor. Therefore, while there is little harm for the supervisor in aiming high to start with, the same is not necessarily true for the student. Therefore, it may well be worth getting some further opinions as to the chance of success for the submission. Ideally, try asking some other faculty members whom you know and trust to have a quick read of the manuscript and give their opinion. They may agree with the supervisor, in which case, great, go ahead and try! But it is worth asking around before putting in all that effort.
NOTE: This is not meant to sound negative. The answer for your friend may well be that he should give it a go. But I do think that there is a non-trivial decision to be made.
As others have noted, there is absolutely nothing wrong in aiming high when publishing papers (unless some exceptional situations with university deadlines etc.). When you get rejected - you can just try another journal.
When you do the other way around and get accepted for the first any low-profile journal you will never know if your work didn't deserve something better - and possibly you will regret that decision :)
Another advantage of trying high-profile journals first, is that even if you get rejected you will get great, constructive reviews, which are really worth the wait.