I was extremely worried when I heard that Sony Pictures was creating "The Emoji Movie,"I really was. At first glance, it seems like such a cynical cash grab to pull in box office dollars to make up for Sony’s past couple losses. To be fair to "The Emoji Movie," I was also extremely skeptical when I heard there would be a Lego Movie and when I heard of the "Angry Birds Movie". The difference here is that "The Lego Movie" and Angry Birds turned out to be really good, whereas " ""The Emoji Movie" was not. It wasn’t as horrible as I was thinking it would be but it brought nothing new or exciting to the table. The "Angry Birds Movie" gave a nice backstory to the game we all used to play on our phones, even though the movie was years overdue I think it told a fulfilling story and utilized a lot of the game’s mechanics in the action scenes. "The Lego Movie" is such a great movie that I’m saving my thoughts on it for its own review, it’s that well-made. But you didn’t click on this article to read what I thought of Angry Birds or Legos, you clicked to find out if "The Emoji Movie" is worth checking out. The short answer: 😒
Yeah, the movie was pretty “meh,” which is fitting since the protagonist of the film is the “meh” emoji. I think "The Emoji Movie" could’ve been great if it had nailed its execution, instead it decided to borrow concepts from far superior animated movies that have come out recently.
The movie follows Gene, the 😒 emoji along with his friend High-Five ✋🏻. The story is so pointless and unsurprising that I don’t exactly know where to start. In this world, every emoji is supposed to have just one expression and stick with it for the rest of their lives. Gene finds himself laughing 😂, in love 😍, silly 😜, money-hungry 🤑, scared and sad 😱 😭 at various points of his day-to-day life. This proves a problem for the whole world of “Textopolis” and he’s considered a freak. He’s sort of like a “Divergent” if you follow the "Divergent" series, he’s supposed to conform to just one emotion but he feels multiple emotions. I think that base concept is interesting to work with but the movie resorts to lame, bottom of the barrel humor that not many people in my theater bothered to use up air to laugh at.
This movie insulted me by stealing (yeah, I said stealing) concepts from better recent movies. The whole idea of emojis being in control of a human’s social life and his interactions is straight out of "Inside Out". In "Inside Out" there’s a “central hub” where the core emotions control how Riley’s head works along with other “islands” compiled of her personalities. In this movie, there’s “Textopolis,” which controls the emojis and helps their user, Alex, interact with his friends via text. The phone also has other planets which are the other apps on his phone: Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, Candy Crush, Spotify, you name it. There was also a bit of "Wreck-It Ralph" hidden in the film. In "Wreck-It Ralph" the concept of “I don’t want to be the bad guy anymore,” works perfectly because it’s interesting to follow the story of a video character who wants to break out of the role predetermined for him. This movie lazily retreats these ideas that worked far better before, they even stole the plot twist from "Wreck-It Ralph". I don’t care about typing out spoilers here because the plot and the story sincerely do not matter in the grand scheme of things. Near the middle of the movie, we find out the “hacker girl” emoji was really a princess emoji all along who went rogue. That is literally the plot twist of "Wreck-It Ralph" where we find out Vanellope, the “glitch” of her video game was once the princess of the game and was programmed out of it by the villain. It really takes guts to steal plot points from Disney, Sony.
Wow everyone, look! Better movies than "The Emoji Movie"!
The voice cast is very mixed, some choices were spot-on while the others just didn't click with me at all. The main character, Gene is played by T.J. Miller and he brings such a big pile of nothing to his performance. He’s supposed to be “meh” and he only really utilizes that emotion in his voice in one of the last scenes of the movie. His father, however, was played by Steven Wright who is pretty much the embodiment of “meh.” He has such a boring monotone voice that it works perfectly here in this movie. Casting hasn’t been that good since they got another comedian, Lewis Black to play “Anger” in "Inside Out." Hey, they stole something else from "Inside Out"! What are you doing Sony?! Maya Rudolph plays the villain of the movie,"Smiler” the 😁 emoji. I think she played this role extremely well. The idea of the happiest emoji being the most sinister is interesting and Maya Rudolph brings a lot of intensity to her performance. James Corden is the voice of High-Five and even though he delivers a few funny lines here and there, his performance was pretty annoying and I had such mixed feelings whenever his character showed up on screen.
The blatant advertising in this movie was off the charts. Throughout the movie, the characters go into different apps but they serve no real purpose to the story. Facebook is only there for a 2-second joke about how fake Facebook “friends” are. YouTube is only there so they can show a cute cat video to the audience, Spotify is only there so you can hear hit songs while the main characters are on a boat ride on the sound waves (it’s as dumb as it sounds.) Candy Crush is a one-off joke that was already ruined to death in the trailers of this movie. Nothing that happened in this movie really mattered, it was all just pointless adventures in different apps so that the parents taking their kids to this movie can go “Oh I know that thing!” at various moments.
Don’t bother watching "The Emoji Movie". It barely has any heart to it despite having an interesting premise. All the jokes fall flat, especially Patrick Stewart (who plays the infamous 💩.) All they give Patrick Stewart are cheap poop jokes, nothing smart about it. He’s just a highly respected actor being cast as “Poop.” Is that the joke? I’m not sure if I’m missing something. Despite having scathing reviews on various review sites on the internet, I’m surprised to see how well this movie is going to do. My theater was packed full of children and their parents, the theater was almost sold out. This movie is going to make so much money despite not having any care put into the writing, nobody involved in this movie really attempted to write a meaningful plot. They try to wrap it all up nicely at the end by saying “It’s okay to express yourself! Be whatever you want to be!” but the cost of learning this lesson was not worth the poop jokes, forced dance numbers and mediocre storytelling. The only positives I can give this movie are the few voice performances that fit their characters and the animation. I thought everything looked nice, but that was about it. This definitely wasn’t the worst movie I’ve seen in 2017, but it really does show that just because something is recognizable to an audience doesn’t mean it’s instantly going to be well-received. Most of the laughs started to die away after the first half hour of the movie, even the little kids seemed tired of it near the end. When little kids start saying “meh” to your movie, you know you took a wrong turn somewhere. My Emoji review of "The Emoji Movie" is a big fat 👎🏻
