My journey to The Emoji Movie is a long and perilous one and it begins with a question: Why the **** did I see The Emoji Movie?
To preface the latter question, I did not watch all of it. I actually stayed for a little over half before the insipidness of the movie killed me enough on the inside that I had to leave. To answer the why question, I took my kids to see Spider-Man and, passing a mostly empty theater that was about to show The Emoji Movie, I asked the ticket taker if she would mind if we snuck in and watched it.
“You sure you want to do that to yourself?” she asked with a laugh.
Oh, yes… I was sure.
So, I got a free showing to The Emoji Movie and, basically, everything you’ve heard about this movie is true… it is literally the best movie ever made about the inner workings of a cell phone.
This is the story of an emoji named Gene who is supposed to be the “meh” emoji, but is having trouble fitting in because he’s a veritable cornucopia of emotions and he can make any number of faces besides “meh.” Now, I know what you’re thinking… this would make him talented as he can replace any other emoji in the phone, but no… it makes him an outcast for some reason which I’m assuming that everyone else is thinking he’s going to take their jerbs.
After messing up his “meh” face when his user texts a girl he likes, he puts the entire emoji society into turmoil and danger as the user is going to wipe his phone and Gene has to accompany the High Five emoji and Jailbreak, a princess emoji who wants to not be a princess emoji (that was a spoiler by the way and, if I just angered you by revealing that spoiler to The Emoji Movie, you are what’s wrong with society), to Dropbox so that they can fix Gene and make him all of the “meh” he needs to be.
It’s awful. Simply awful. There’s nothing clever about it, nothing funny about it… it’s creatively and intellectually bankrupt, it’s devoid of joy, and it’s the first animated film I’ve ever seen where the voice actors sounded bored. It’s stuffed full of random product placement from Candy Crush to Youtube to Dropbox — at least in the half of the movie I saw — and honestly, it feels like a studio-mandated movie, like some out of touch executive was getting a pedi and a blow job and said, “Hey, emojis are big right now! Let’s make a movie about whatever those are!”
Probably the highlight of this movie is Patrick Stewart making poop jokes, but honestly, American Dad has Patrick Stewart saying more immature things that, unlike The Emoji Movie, are actually funny, so… yeah… no reason to see this movie now.
This is easily the worst movie I’ve seen in years. I’ve walked about of maybe three movies in my entire life because that is the level of fortitude I’ve developed, but when even my children, who actually watch Teen Titans Go on purpose, start whining and asking to leave, I just couldn’t bear to subject them to any more lest CPS remove them from my custody.
Jason Gaston 