Director: Tony Leondis Studio: Sony Pictures Genre(s): Comedy Rated: PG (For rude humor) |
It’s an odd feeling to walk away from a movie feeling that
it is not as bad as you feared, yet also not as good as it seemed it could
be. “The Emoji Movie” is one of those
terrible ideas that comes along once in a blue moon when a company is desperate
enough to try anything – and I mean anything – in hopes it will
connect. For a cash strapped company
like Sony, making a movie about the emoji’s people use on their phones must
have sounded like good business on paper.
Everyone is familiar with them, they could design their own trademarked
versions of the icons, and no royalties would need to be paid in licensing. Plus, kids love them! They are using them in texting all the time
on their phones! I would also argue that
most kids are on their phones too much to care about going to the theaters to
see a movie about emoji’s in the first place, but let’s focus on one problem at
a time, shall we?
After all, once you’ve got it in your head to make a movie
about emoji’s the real question is what does it look like? The answer, believe it or not, is kind of
creative. I sort of liked the look of
Textopolis, where emoji’s of all diverse kinds live. They talk to each other, have families, and
they have the important job of being there for Alex, the kid who owns the
smartphone they live in. Item emoji’s
have it easy because they just have to stand there, but facial emoji’s are the
ones who bring it home; they must keep the same facial expression all the time,
just in case they need to be used on the fly.
This can be difficult if you are the smiling emoji and have just broken
your arm or the sad emoji who just won the lottery. The emoji who appears to be having difficulty
with this concept is Gene (T.J. Miller), who is supposed to be a “meh” emoji,
yet finds himself walking around with a variety of different emotions.
This is such a problem that even Poop (who I’m sorry to say
is voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart…who I’m certain lost a bet if he agreed to be
in this) gets more respect then he does. Because he has different emotions, he must
travel outside the app with Hi-5 (James Corden) and Jailbreak (Anna Faris), while
traveling through the Just Dance and Spotify apps, all to get to the wondrous
place known as ‘the cloud,’ which is found at Dropbox. While the movie had been struggling for a bit
before we got to this point, this is where the movie stopped being a movie and
started being a commercial for smartphones.
A main subplot of the ‘film’ involves Alex trying to talk to a girl and
not being able to get her attention because he doesn’t have the right emoji to
send her. In my day, we used to talk to
girls we were interested in asking out on a date.
“The Emoji Movie” presents two worlds: one where kids live
life through their smartphone and another where smartphone codes walk through blatant
product placement that could be funnier if the producers weren’t trying so hard
not to offend their sponsors. I don’t want
to spoil too much, but it also bothers me that the ‘message’ (ho ho) of the
movie is that more smartphone use is a good thing, where I believe smartphone
usage with kids is a big problem and should have been addressed a long time ago
as such. On the positive, I can’t say
the movie is evil or nearly as insulting as it easily could have been. The idea of hiring Patrick Steward to voice
Poop still irks me greatly, but a little bit of effort WAS put into it! On the other hand, the execution is rather
bland and boring, with a message that is pretty offensive the more I think
about it. Whether or not kids will want
to return to the theater to see something like “The Emoji Movie” is a debatable
question, but the more pressing one is if this is what they want to watch,
should they even bother?
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is nothing (objectionably) wrong with this movie. Recommended for all ages.
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