For many cinema lovers the last few weeks of July of 2017 have been pretty exciting. With Dunkirk blowing away fans of history looking for a visually stunning and star studded film diamond, Spider Man Homecoming stealing the hearts of Marvel fans, Despicable Me 3 having the kids giddy and Atomic Blonde showing some girl power. I went to my local cinema on July 28th with a different goal though. I went to see a movie that has been so critically panned that it is honestly unbelievable and that I just had to see to understand why. So here is a legitimate review of what may be the biggest flop in cinema in a long time, The Emoji Movie.

Please keep in mind as you read this that this is all my opinion. If you like this movie despite its many flaws then more power to you! Who am I stomp on your fun? So please take this with a grain of salt. I also may focus on aspects that other reviewers of this movie do not and if you are expecting to see a review by a film critic's perspective, you are in the wrong place. I am not a film critic, I am just a writer and for the most part I will be basing my review on plot, character development and other writing aspects. Enjoy!

The First 15 Minutes

The first few minutes I was actually optimistic as I watched. The animation was better than I anticipated, the voice actors were convincing and there were several visual gags that were amusing. I even laughed a few times. Of course there were immediately bad jokes as well, but I had expected this and just shrugged at them. Just the fact it had made me laugh at all was shocking. It seemed the film was going to actually try to make a statement about society in the first few minutes as well with several jokes involving teens being addicted to their phones and Emojis being the future of language. I was honestly shocked that this movie was going to have a real message. The main character Gene seemed likable too. He's an Emoji who is supposed to be a certain way all the time, but he isn't. He has a wide array of emotions and wishes he could display them but his family puts him down. It was honestly kind of relatable. Things were promising! So where did it go wrong?

The Rest Of The Movie

After you have seen the first 15 minutes of the movie, just leave the theatre. I am not even exaggerating, you have already seen everything this film has to offer. The jokes do not get any better than those in the previous few minutes. They actually become progressively worse because they are so predictable. In fact, this film blatantly reuses jokes. It turns jokes into subplots! The Characters in this movie actually seem to be interesting at first. You then realize the reason you thought they were interesting was that their entire character development was revealed to you during their first scenes. Most of them remain static through the whole movie with no real developments. The James Corden character Hi-5 is the worst about this. He is the third most prominent character and I think his only real growth as a character is a line he says in the fourth act that could be removed and have no impact on anything. The film poorly attempts to be original by playing around with modern movements and real world conflicts like feminism, technology, high school drama and acceptance. You then realize these are just the starts to jokes that are made later and fall flat. Another failure by the film is how it attempts to incorporate real apps into the movie to seem like it is real. This sounds incredibly cool and had me enthused. In the end the movie just seems dated though with it having odd choices like candy crush, a mobile game whose popularity has dropped so substantially that more than half its user base from when it debuted has uninstalled it, Youtube where we see a viral video that is several months old and Spotify which serves only as a development tool and gets barely any screen time despite being one of the more interesting apps in my opinion since it is actually used and not just a dated reference. A huge amount of time is dedicated to the Just Dance Mobile App, which I didn't even know was a thing before watching this movie. Is it product placement if the company owns the product in the film? The plot was incredibly predictable. In the first 30 minutes I was able to whisper to my friend every twist the film would have and I was entirely spot on. The film seems to basically attempt to take the best parts of Wreck-it-Ralph and Inside Out, two animated films that I loved for being original and having compelling stories. The result is a train wreck.

I only recommend this film if you are seeing it with friends and are going at a time when the theatre is not crowded that way you can make fun of it as you watch it. Aside from this I see no redeeming factors for this film even in the case of it being a children's film. I would feel like a bad parent if I put this on for my kids. So if you like ripping on bad movies with predictable plots, characters you will forget in an hour after watching it, dance scenes, the Just Dance Mobile App, the same joke 17 times and endings that give you headaches, congratulations as you are the one person this movie was made for.