Eric Langberg Everything's Interesting Aug 29, 2025

We Are Your Friends finds a generation and a country on the precipice of… something, a generation holding its breath while it wants to see what that something might be ... It's 2015, and we can tell the bottom is about to fall out of the world.

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Ankit Ojha Cinema Elite Jul 9, 2024 3/5

“We Are Your Friends” is, at the end of the day, a harmless movie that’s difficult to strongly recommend, but one I’d encourage readers to take on a spin once.

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Eddie Harrison film-authority.com Apr 2, 2024 3/5

...like the central character featured here, We Are Your Friends has a bad reputation, but if you’re prepared to shut up and enjoy the music and some blissed-out visuals, it’s a surprisingly smooth ride...

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Richard Crouse Richard Crouse Feb 3, 2021 3.5/5

Appears to be a teen movie but Cole's coming-of-age and Efron's performance feel very grown up.

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Thom Denson One Room With A View May 4, 2019 1/5

Through phoned-in performances, a cringe-inducing script and lazy direction, We Are Your Friends sets the reputation of the EDM art form back years.

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Mae Abdulbaki Movies with Mae May 2, 2019 2.5/5

We Are Your Friends won't make you want to be any of these characters' friends. Even the saddening event that happens later on, and serves as the turning point for Efron's character, lands no impact.

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James Clay Fresh Fiction Mar 1, 2019 C+

WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS has enough beats per minute to keep the party going.

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Camilla Long Sunday Times (UK) Mar 1, 2019 2/5

It has the emotional content of a three-minute dance track.

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Matthew Bond The Mail on Sunday (UK) Oct 30, 2017

Zac Efron, in the central role of Cole, does a lot of that funny thing with his eyes that he mistakes for acting, while director Max Joseph concentrates on pointing his voyeuristic camera at Emily Ratajkowski's chest.

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Sarah Marrs Lainey Gossip Oct 16, 2017

What Friends needs is a leading man who can propel us past the inherent boredom of this artistic endeavor by virtue of his charisma, but Zac Efron is not that guy...

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Max Weiss Baltimore Magazine Jun 12, 2016 2/4

Efron is a natural and likeable presence on screen and has proven to be a pretty decent actor in films like Hairspray and The Paperboy. But the problem with "regularness" is that, in the wrong hands, it's kind of dull.

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Mark Jackson Epoch Times Jun 10, 2016 3/5

'We Are Your Friends' is a big-screen soap opera-all beautiful people, all the time, who wear very small bathing suits, and jump up and down near swimming pools to 128 bpm.

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Matt Glasby South China Morning Post Apr 6, 2016 2/5

With endless talk of BPM and EQ levels, DJ-ing is - at best - inherently uncinematic and, at worst, dull as a dust cover.

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Rafael Rosales Santos Konexión (MX) Mar 2, 2016 6/10

We Are Your Friends is an entertaining film, if only to pass the time. But it won't give you anything deep or meaningful; it's one of those movie options to enjoy with the kind of friends with no interest in cinema at all. [Full Review in Spanish]

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Dan Mecca The Film Stage Feb 21, 2016 C

Not unlike the generation it's trying to represent, We Are Your Friends never really takes the time to consider what it would like to say.

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Alistair Harkness Scotsman Jan 1, 2016 2/5

The execution is so laden with dated stylistic quirks that it feels like a relic from the late 1990s. The plot is pretty cookie-cutter too.

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Alex Zane The Sun (UK) Jan 1, 2016 3/5

Efron is utterly convincing as Cole, a guy dreaming of creating a dance track that will turn him into the next big thing.

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Felix Vasquez Jr. Cinema Crazed Dec 8, 2015

When it's trying to be a stern melodrama about achieving your dreams and igniting your passion, it comes off as inadvertently laughable.

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Violet LeVoit AllMovie Dec 3, 2015 2.5/5

We Are Your Friends is a blatant retread of Saturday Night Fever, a cynical move built on the assumption that most millennials haven't seen the original.

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Katherine Monk Ex-Press.com Nov 15, 2015 2/5

There's something sick at the very centre of this party culture, and the movie wanders around it - poking at its festering sores and cataract eyes - without actually taking its pulse.

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