Review- The Emoji Movie
Do you hate? You will.
I've seen some bad movies in my time, I really have. I've seen movies so bad they're good like The Room, movies so bad they're really bad like Gigli and movies that are so soulless and empty that they barely count as films like Pan, the worst film I've ever seen. Sorry, second worst now. The Emoji Movie fits into the last category. It has not a single original thought in its disgusting 90 minute shell. The plot is that an emoji is too emotional so has to hack himself meh by adventuring through every app that paid enough to be featured. That's it. If the plot sounds familiar, that's because it's almost exactly the same film as Inside Out, a brave move considering it is one of my all time favourite films. Two plots run in tandem, one in the real world, one in a world the child isn't aware of. Emotion is at the core, it's a journey and there's even a moment where the characters have to escape a pit of certain annihilation. So actually, it's just Inside Out without the emotion, the laughter or the originality. Inside Out made me cry, this film just made me want to cry.
Technically there were performances in this film so I have to talk about them. The main character is played by TJ Miller who I am no longer convinced is funny. First there was Office Christmas Party, now this. It takes a lot to put real personality into a voice role but Miller unfortunately doesn't have that. James Corden also has a voice role and other than being instantly recognisable because he sounds like James Corden, he does nothing. Anna Farris is in the film. Mediocre at best. Maya Rudolph gives the closest thing to a good performance because her character is always smiling but is the villain. Get it? She's the... Oh forget it, there'll be more of this later. The saddest performance however is Sir Patrick Stewart as Poop. He's actually listed as Sir Patrick Stewart in the credits and ironically, it is one long, large dump on his career. Watch Green Room with him in instead. A man has his arm sliced to pieces and it's less miserable than this.
I feel like I should talk about the attempts at humour in this film and attempts is the perfect word for this because you can tell there are punchlines there but without a set up or a decent execution there is no laughter. I laughed once in the film and that was when they went into the Instagram app and a kid in front of me said "Hey, where are the memes?". That wasn't even that funny but compared to the comedic void that had been slowly sucking me dry over an agonising sixty minutes and would continue to for thirty more minutes. Most jokes consist of spotting what the emoji is and making a simple joke about that product. For example, a shrimp emoji appears. "Hey buddy, where are you going?" "I'm going to chuck myself on the barbie" and then he jumps into a prawn cocktail glass. Get it? Because he's a prawn. This isn't just me being miserable and cynical, I was in a shockingly full cinema with plenty of families and there were maybe six laughs total and I am including people laughing at the same joke. Some people have a six laugh test to see if a comedy film is worth watching but if you have to include other people in the cinema, it definitely didn't pass the test.
There is an even bigger problem than anything I've already mentioned though and that is how this film is simply a shell to advertise phone apps, although that description is generous. As part of the journey through the phone, Meh and friends have to journey through apps and I am only listing them so I can shit on them. Candy Crush is one of the most blatant of the lot as the characters have to actually play a round of the game to leave and when they arrive, the logo drops down and a voice says it too. It made me sad. Also bad was the Just Dance app where the characters just listened to music for five minutes, which I guess was less blatant than sailing through the Spotify "streams" later. Finally, their ultimate destination is Dropbox because of how safe it is and the rapid access to the internet. Clearly, this film was made to push apps on phones that companies paid big money for, although there seems to be an attempt at understanding phones. For example, Jailbreak, Trojan Horse and trolls are phrases that are all used except that the people who "wrote" this film clearly have no idea what any of them mean as they're just loosely thrown in and mentioned. It would be patronising if you only caught one of these but it's agonising if you actually understand technology.
Fuck this movie. There is not a single redeemable part of it. The performances are phoned in, the plot is poor despite being stolen from an amazing movie and the jokes are non existent, with all being wrapped up in a couple of hit songs and some money provided by the makers of Candy Crush. It's not even so bad it's good, it's so bad it hurts and the pain is still fresh. So groundbreaking is this movie's awfulness that I'm going to do something I've never done before. Usually I base my reviews off the scale on IMDb (1-10) but to give the film a 1 would insult Gigli, Pan and Kurt Cameron's Saving Christmas. That's why the Emoji Movie gets a record low of a
I've seen some bad movies in my time, I really have. I've seen movies so bad they're good like The Room, movies so bad they're really bad like Gigli and movies that are so soulless and empty that they barely count as films like Pan, the worst film I've ever seen. Sorry, second worst now. The Emoji Movie fits into the last category. It has not a single original thought in its disgusting 90 minute shell. The plot is that an emoji is too emotional so has to hack himself meh by adventuring through every app that paid enough to be featured. That's it. If the plot sounds familiar, that's because it's almost exactly the same film as Inside Out, a brave move considering it is one of my all time favourite films. Two plots run in tandem, one in the real world, one in a world the child isn't aware of. Emotion is at the core, it's a journey and there's even a moment where the characters have to escape a pit of certain annihilation. So actually, it's just Inside Out without the emotion, the laughter or the originality. Inside Out made me cry, this film just made me want to cry.
Technically there were performances in this film so I have to talk about them. The main character is played by TJ Miller who I am no longer convinced is funny. First there was Office Christmas Party, now this. It takes a lot to put real personality into a voice role but Miller unfortunately doesn't have that. James Corden also has a voice role and other than being instantly recognisable because he sounds like James Corden, he does nothing. Anna Farris is in the film. Mediocre at best. Maya Rudolph gives the closest thing to a good performance because her character is always smiling but is the villain. Get it? She's the... Oh forget it, there'll be more of this later. The saddest performance however is Sir Patrick Stewart as Poop. He's actually listed as Sir Patrick Stewart in the credits and ironically, it is one long, large dump on his career. Watch Green Room with him in instead. A man has his arm sliced to pieces and it's less miserable than this.
I feel like I should talk about the attempts at humour in this film and attempts is the perfect word for this because you can tell there are punchlines there but without a set up or a decent execution there is no laughter. I laughed once in the film and that was when they went into the Instagram app and a kid in front of me said "Hey, where are the memes?". That wasn't even that funny but compared to the comedic void that had been slowly sucking me dry over an agonising sixty minutes and would continue to for thirty more minutes. Most jokes consist of spotting what the emoji is and making a simple joke about that product. For example, a shrimp emoji appears. "Hey buddy, where are you going?" "I'm going to chuck myself on the barbie" and then he jumps into a prawn cocktail glass. Get it? Because he's a prawn. This isn't just me being miserable and cynical, I was in a shockingly full cinema with plenty of families and there were maybe six laughs total and I am including people laughing at the same joke. Some people have a six laugh test to see if a comedy film is worth watching but if you have to include other people in the cinema, it definitely didn't pass the test.
There is an even bigger problem than anything I've already mentioned though and that is how this film is simply a shell to advertise phone apps, although that description is generous. As part of the journey through the phone, Meh and friends have to journey through apps and I am only listing them so I can shit on them. Candy Crush is one of the most blatant of the lot as the characters have to actually play a round of the game to leave and when they arrive, the logo drops down and a voice says it too. It made me sad. Also bad was the Just Dance app where the characters just listened to music for five minutes, which I guess was less blatant than sailing through the Spotify "streams" later. Finally, their ultimate destination is Dropbox because of how safe it is and the rapid access to the internet. Clearly, this film was made to push apps on phones that companies paid big money for, although there seems to be an attempt at understanding phones. For example, Jailbreak, Trojan Horse and trolls are phrases that are all used except that the people who "wrote" this film clearly have no idea what any of them mean as they're just loosely thrown in and mentioned. It would be patronising if you only caught one of these but it's agonising if you actually understand technology.
Fuck this movie. There is not a single redeemable part of it. The performances are phoned in, the plot is poor despite being stolen from an amazing movie and the jokes are non existent, with all being wrapped up in a couple of hit songs and some money provided by the makers of Candy Crush. It's not even so bad it's good, it's so bad it hurts and the pain is still fresh. So groundbreaking is this movie's awfulness that I'm going to do something I've never done before. Usually I base my reviews off the scale on IMDb (1-10) but to give the film a 1 would insult Gigli, Pan and Kurt Cameron's Saving Christmas. That's why the Emoji Movie gets a record low of a
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