Review of The Emoji Movie (2017) by Christopher B — 28 Oct 2017

"Did The Emoji Movie really deserve all of that hate? YES!".

Director: Tony Leondis.

Writers: Tony Leondis, Mike White, Eric Siegel.

Produced by: Michelle Raimo Kouyate.

Music by: Patrick Doyle, Edward Shear.

Story by: Tony Leondis, Eric Siegel.

Since the day Sony Pictures Animation announced that they were making a movie based on emojis (you know those little faces on your phone that give me cancer every time someone sends me one), audiences would cry wolf, stating that either Sony was attempting desperately to connect to the millennial generation, or Hollywood really ran out of ideas. Up till the days of it's realese, The Emoji Movie stayed in tedious waters, until on the mourning of July 28th, the Emoji Movie was FINALLY thrust out into the world, and it sucked. People blamed it for being uncreative, unfunny, and that the plot, and script made no sense, and after seeing it for my self, I can confirm that The Emoji Movie is a cynical, unfunny, by the numbers, animated movie, so ultimately cringeworthy, that it's almost unbelievable. I believe however, that the Emoji Movie does not mark the end of film, but it's not much better.

Oh right, my grade is 4/10, happy now (no you're not)?

Plot:

Oh wait, there's a plot? Let get into it.

The plot of this mess revolves around Gene (T.J. Miller), a "meh" emoji. He wants to work in a cube, a place where emojis, well, work. The survival of Textopolis, which is the city where Gene lives, depends on all of the different emojis acting how they are supposed to act, the crying emoji always has to be crying, the laughing emoji always has to be laughing, the smiling emoji always has to be smiling, etc. The problem is is that Gene can actually express multiple emotions, so he's treated like an outcast.The phone they live in is owned by Alex (Jake T. Austin), why? Well they gotta rip-off Inside Out somehow.

On his first day of working, Gene screws up, how? He only needs to hold a single face for a second, but he flips out for no reason. Thanks for ruining everything, you dingbat. This put him in the sights of the dictator of Textopolis, Smiler (Maya Rudolph). Who wants to delete Gene, because he flipped out, causing Alex to notice something's wrong with his phone, therefore ruining everything. She sends weird robot things after Gene. He runs into Hi-Five (James Corden), who tells him that he needs to find a hacker emoji, so that she can hack Gene into a regular "meh" and re-hack Hi-Five into a popular emoji. They go to a piracy app, where they find Jailbreak (Anna Faris), and goes on a product placement adventure.

First of all, the script is kinda stupid, and the story is all over the place, and it's quite confusing, and convoluted. The premise is screwed up (eg. If emojis retire, do they die, who are those chip guys, is Smiler in charge of them, or are they in charge of her?) Right away, you'll realize that they basically copied the story from The Lego Movie, and similar concepts from Wreck-It Ralph, and Inside Out. Not only that, but product placement is through the roof (Just Dance, Spotify, Candy Crush, which I hate). It basically serves as a dispenser of ads. So, it's basically a sneaky dispenser for ads. Everything about this film is "meh". None of jokes are funny, and are rather predictable and bland.

Characters:

The characters are weak, cliched, and otherwise copied from other archetypes. Which is not strange, considering that this film is trying to be the next Lego Movie or Wreck-It Ralph. Gene is the regular outsider character who would go on a big adventure to fit in, Hi-Five is the ridiculous side-kick character, who just has to be funny so that kids laugh at him. Jailbreak is the poorly written feminist character who makes it obvious that she don't want no man. Smiler is the generic control freak villain character done wrong, because usually, it's done right. The characters are all meh, just meh. Poop is just there so that they can say that Patrick Stewart played a poop emoji, wow. Just class (clap, clap).

Music:

Eh.