Back in May, we described the preview for the new Zac Efron abs-fest, We Are Your Friends, as the trailer for “what looks like the worst music movie ever made“, and what a prophetic headline that was.
As Vulture reports, despite a lot of eye-candy and capitalising on the ever-expanding EDM bubble, We Are Your Friends made no friends at the US box office over the weekend, now boasting the fourth-worst wide release opening in history.
The film, colloquially known as the ‘Zac Efron DJ movie’ made a very meagre $1.8 million, which is dismal for a film that received such a wide release. For context, that opening is worse than Eddie Murphy’s notorious The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
“We’re disappointed,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. distribution executive vice president. “We believe in Zac and this was a passion project of his.” But as Your EDM notes, disappointment is the feeling you get when you fail a test you study really hard for.
We Are Your Friends is, for all intents and purposes, a disaster. The film had a budget of $6 million and only managed to pull just under $2 million during its opening weekend and well, the critics aren’t loving it either.
The film currently has a 43 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.7 rating on IMDB. Critical reviews have mostly centred on Efron’s acting skills, as well as those of the other cast members, the script and story, and filmmaking as weak points.
In an op-ed dissecting the film’s failure, Your EDM argue that the film’s downfall is the way it romanticises the idea of EDM, whilst “leaving out the real intricacies and killing its credibility”.
“Lack of support from anyone in the dance music industry didn’t help either,” the outlet adds. “From the moment people got word that Zac Efron was going to play the lead through the debut of the film’s trailer, everyone from Deadmau5 to GTA skewered WAYF.”
