Review of The Emoji Movie (2017) by Sherlock H — 01 Aug 2017

In "honor" of World Emoji Day, which is the logical culmination of Hallmark holidays in the digital age, I decided to do one of the most dishonorable things imaginable and watched this on Netflix. Ironically enough, I was so flabberaghasted by the sheer pandering stupidity of this lifeless crud, so caught up watching this utter train wreck crash from one lazy idea to the next, that I never even felt the need to pick up my phone and distract myself. Really, this is astoundingly dumb, just one bad choice after another, but in a "so bad it's still moderately entertaining" kind of way.

Of course, as "Sausage Party" and "Toy Story" have shown, there is great potential in showing the secret adventures of everyday objects, and one can easily imagine interesting stories of one emoji trying to rescue another from being discontinued, or an underused emoji leading a social revolt (with slow time consequences) against the more popular ones-ideas already minimally hinted at here. The problem, rather, is that the movie makes the truly idiotic decision to make a lack of characters central to the plot: The emojis are defined by their flatness, the monotony, their total lack of growth and change-this never even gets challenged, but is the norm for the whole runtime, which ends up feeling totally devoid of not just intelligence, but any life whatsoever.