#67 - The Emoji Movie

This little black mark in the history of pop culture was a long time coming. I promised myself I’d never pay money for this movie, so I’m going to be streaming it on Sky Cinema instead. That’s why this review has taken so long.

But here we are, here we are. The Emoji Movie was released in 2017, and still haunts the nightmares of everyone who watched it, earning an 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which puts it at Fant4stic levels… yeah, this is gonna be a tough one.

It did make money, $250m on a $50m budget but when you find out that Incredibles 2 broke $1bn worldwide this summer, this is relatively pathetic by comparison. Still, it’s sad this movie made money, we’re to blame people. But let’s just dive in and see how bad this is…

We open with some exposition by TJ Miller… Nope, I’m not touching that subject, moving on… 

He’s talking about the world of the smartphone, and we’re introduced to Alex and despite this whole movie being nothing more than a corporate exercise in selling smartphones and apps to children whilst ripping off much better movies like Toy Story, Wreck it Ralph, the Lego Movie and Inside Out, he’s one of the primary reasons this story doesn’t work.

The problem is simple, they didn’t put any effort into his character. We have no reason to care about him, which means that we have no reason to care about his problems, much less those that come from the interior of his phone! So, he, and get this, got a text from a girl he likes. But before we get any further we get to see 2 kids bump into each other because they’re too busy looking at their phones.

What might seem like a cheap joke is also a major f*cking flaw in the movie, like I said, the entire purpose of this movie is to sell this stuff to kids, so a joke about kids being obsessive with their phones is a little off-message. This isn’t a very good ad. Follow that a joke about kids attention spans, and that’s 2 for 2 on off-brand jokes.

And then here comes the kicker, they describe emojis as ‘the most important invention in the history of communications’

  

F*cking seriously? OK, so enough with the human world, let’s get into Textopolis, the world where every thing has to do that one thing every single moment of every single day. Which leads to a problem, since emoji’s can only do one expression or feel one emotion, they have no character depth. Ones that don’t represent emotions may have more depth, but they’re not the central focus of the movie.

So, questions about world-building to follow. Why is there a lottery? Do emojis need currency? Do emojis have bones? Why would they have bones? Why would anyone bother to correct an emoji that’s always supposed to be festive? Are there always different colours of the same emoji? Is that a thing? And we’re introduced to our main ‘protagonist’ he’s a ‘meh’ emoji who has trouble being meh all the time.

OK, so something you will inevitably notice when watching the emoji movie... Also why are you watching the emoji movie? You have so many better movies to try, watch anything else! Anyway, the jokes are all cr*p. Gene, the ‘meh’ emoji, bumps into a clock emoji, says ‘is that the time’ and the clock responds ‘hey, my eyes are up here, pal’ I mean, what?

So it’s Gene’s ‘first day on the phone...’ Who was the meh before him? Why has he quit? And we’re introduced to Gene’s parents and now I have to think about emoji procreation… Thank you very much for that movie, it’s not even necessary to the function of this world. They take him into a bathroom and the father tells him he’s not ready to function in the cube yet, we’ll get to the cube in a minute, but here’s Patrick Stuart playing a sh*t emoji, and he has a son too, damn you’re making me think about emoji procreation again, STOP IT! But that conflict gets tossed out the window.

We’re introduced to Smiler the ‘original emoji???' So, when sending a text, an emoji is scanned and the scan is sent, pity the phone doesn’t have, I don’t know, a hard drive so the scans can be stored and repeated but no no no, we can’t have that, the world falls apart if… There’s a favourites lounge for some reason where we’re introduced to High Five, played by James Corden, he wants in but he’s no longer a favourite. Much like his reception with the audience, really.

So, the call is made and the cube is ready to be used again. In the real world, a teacher is making a comparison with hieroglyphics and emojis. F*ck it, I’m out! I can’t take this any more, I… I… F*ck, apparently, I’m under contract to finish this one, sh*t.

Alex is being the model student, talking in class and playing on his phone. After much consideration, he decides the best emoji to respond to the girl he likes is ‘meh.’ But as Gene is being scanned, he freaks out and ultimately the emoji sent is a sneeze, I think.

Making matters worse, Gene jumps out of his cube, onto the scanner and that somehow results in damage. He’s regarded as a malfunction and his parents consider locking him away, fuelling Gene’s feelings of shame, he tries to head to fix it but Smiler has determined that he needs to be deleted and for some reasons there are anti-virus bots in a text app. Since when does anti-virus software detect malfunctions? Gene makes a run for it, running into High Five.

He takes him to the emoji ‘loser lounge’ which exists for some reason. High Five suggests he find a hacker and get himself reprogrammed, a hacker which he will find in the ‘piracy app’ why is there a piracy app? Apparently, a Princess Emoji, there’s another one, we saw about 4 in the opening, managed to leave the phone and lives on the cloud thanks to hacker named Wyldstyle… I mean Jailbreak. Yes, definitely Jailbreak. Gene convinces High Five to come along and get reprogrammed to be popular because that’s totally how that works?

Where did High Five get monster puppets? I don’t know, what’s important is they leave the text app and go exploring, there’s a joke about Facebook™ there and now a point about how kids are more obsessed with their online personas than their actual friends. I can relate. Either way, point against the movie again, because that’s not a good way to sell Facebook™.

So, Gene’s parents continue to kill the meh joke and decide to head after Gene, unfortunately Smiler realised they’d do this and orders her anti-virus bots to follow them. High Five reveals the pirate app is hidden under a dictionary skin so Alex’s parents don’t find out about it. What secrets could a boy his age have to hide? Plenty I’m sure but not what I’m seeing in this app. Inside the app are internet trolls, implying to me the people behind this have no idea how the internet works and viruses, why would Alex want these on his phone? Also, anti-virus bots are doing a bang-up job. Spam, again, what? Why not show clips of movies he's illegally downloaded, at least that would be true to what piracy actually means.

Anyway, they find Wyldstyle… I mean Jailbreak, and when she can see that Gene can change expressions and with the anti-virus bots closing in, she agrees to help and gets them out as the anti-virus bots do their job and begin eliminating the viruses. They escape and end up in Candy Crush™. Gene ends up stuck on the game board and now they have to play Candy Crush™ in order to… this is just an excuse for advertising Candy Crush™, isn’t it?

In the real world, the Fall Dance is approaching and Alex wants to ask out his crush. But in trying to talk he’s interrupted by his phone going haywire. The app isn’t open, why is it making noise? Alex has had enough and calls up ‘wireless wireless’ to get his phone reset. It’s actually relatively easy to do a factory reset on a phone without taking it to a shop.

So after more fun on Candy Crush™, time for this incredible piece of writing ‘women are always coming up with stuff that men are taking credit for’ I’m sorry, this the emoji movie, are you seriously expecting me to take a ‘girl power’ message away from this, especially since the user is male and his entire personality is wanting to get a girl, a girl he will inevitably get. Sorry, but no…

Meanwhile Gene’s parents head to YouTube™ and continue to kill the meh joke, they set YouTube™ to play a cat video to distract the anti-virus bots, these are pretty lousy anti-virus bots. They’ve been arguing about Gene for a while and now decide to split up. High Five is on a sugar rush and is 20 times more annoying than usual, which was already pretty annoying. Thanks to Jailbreak’s shortcut, they end up on Just Dance™… which apparently can kill them if they don’t dance right, what?

Gene does a cringe-worthy dance move called the emoji pop and you know this is gonna come back for the end dance scene. In the dance, Jailbreak loses her wig, revealing that she is the princess emoji and never made it off the phone. Anti-virus bots begin to close in and Just Dance™ begins playing music in class, Alex is an idiot for not turning his phone on silent. He deletes the app and High Five is lost in the escape. Yay!

Unfortunately Gene wants to rescue him from the Trash, despite them being right next to Dropbox™, where they can get to the cloud and High Five being nothing but a liability this entire journey. Jailbreak knows a shortcut on Spotify™ because of course she does.

Back with the others, Smiler decides to give an anti-virus bot an ‘illegal upgrade’ why? How? What? Why would there be an illegal upgrade to an anti-virus? If it’s an upgrade, surely it’d be legal since anti-virus software is frequently updated? And again, the app seems to play on the phone sporadically, embarrassing Alex. OK, so let’s talk about tension. The emojis are worried about being wiped during a factory reset, but since emojis are part of the text app, which is a default function on any phone, they’ll be back. What’s the problem again?

So, Gene asks Jailbreak if it’s true that birds approach when a princess whistles. Huh? Question, doesn’t Spotify™ occupy a portion of the world the same as the other apps, how can it offer passage to the other side? Anyway they rescue High Five and we cut to Gene’s mother approaching Instagram™. Here would’ve been a good way to inform us of something about Alex and… he’s been to Paris, I guess. She begins to blame herself, but her husband/boyfriend reveals he has the same ailment as Gene but has learned to suppress it. OK, and this meh joke needs to die.

The trio soon confronted by the upgraded anti-virus bot, they try and tangle up his massively long arms and they make it to Dropbox™, which is protected from illegal Malware, get Dropbox™ everybody! Of course they still have the firewall problem. They need a password and believe it’s something personal to Alex, my passwords tend to be a little better than that. When Gene inputs an incorrect password, he’s burned but otherwise unharmed, muting it’s comedic potential.

With all those possibilities exhausted, High Five mentions his ‘girlfriend’ who he tried to flirt by quoting song lyrics in an email. Don’t think I didn’t notice that, that’s less romantic and more pathetic. So they use her name as a password and it works,. Jailbreak begins getting to work with Gene, although he seems less interested now. Gene tries to awkwardly declare his feelings for Jailbreak, but doesn’t seem to be interested in a romantic relationship, figuring how that ties into her identity as a princess, a broken heart basically converts Gene to meh and he’s soon caught by the virus bot, who I think uploaded himself to the cloud through an email app.

Wanting to rescue him, Jailbreak decides to whistle and the Twitter™ bird shows up. That’s the payoff to the talk about the birds. So, as Smiler shows her psychopathic tendencies, High Five and Jailbreak show up to defeat her and her upgraded both rather easily. Who knew anti-virus had an off button? But of-course the phone is still being wiped, oh the drama…

Jailbreak believes she can send one last text over to Alex’s crush and Gene is the only candidate, so he’s put in the cube. He remembers all the things that happened in the movie and lets himself by scanned. Alex sees it on the text app, despite it being in the process of being wiped and sends it over. Addi says she likes him for being ‘one of those guys who can express his feelings’ hahahahhahahahahahahahaha, they’re not being serious, right?

Alex unplugs his phone which instantly undoes the wipe, somehow. And everyone chants Gene’s name and it ends as so many animated kids movies end, with a dance party!

This movie is gigantic pile of 💩

The premise in both the world it tries to build and the plot itself are incredibly derivative. Gene is an outsider cliché and the world feels basically ripped off from Wreck it Ralph, except without any thought put into world-building whatsoever. Hell, Wreck it Ralph would do a similar and much better job with this concept in its sequel.

This means that half-arsed pro-feminist message doesn’t really work either, although there’s an argument that this is the wrong place for it that I couldn’t disagree. As for the importance of being yourself, there’s an argument that that can be an extremely dangerous message to send to children. People evolve and change all the time and, in many cases, people need to evolve. Being yourself is not always the best thing and sometimes circumstances may ask you to be someone else.

The jokes aren’t that funny either, generally either predictable or confusing. One positive I can say is the animation. They took the advantage of emojis having pre-existing designs and ran with it, there are a couple of good visual gags hidden in the mix of cr*p. It’s not Pixar level or anything and you can see some cut/paste background models in there but the motion was smooth and the lip syncing was good.

And then of course, there's the advertising, it is well beyond what's acceptable when it comes to product placement. Apps are referenced and become part of the narrative without actually being necessary in the overall story. 

This movie gives me rage issues!

Don’t waste your time with this one, it’s not good enough to like, and not incompetent enough to like ironically

Rating 45%