Written by Robbie Bullis
Somebody at Sony Pictures genuinely thought that the Emoji Movie was good enough to fund, animate, produce, and then release. Just writing that sentence is like a punch in the gut for me. The Emoji Movie. It’s as if some corporate suit threw a dart at a board with all the current trends for young people and picked whatever it hit. Honestly I can’t for the life of me figure out how or why this film was made. Was it a labor of love? Did someone really believe in it?
I mean, it was probably just a bunch of people hoping for money, but that’s besides the point.
I saw this movie with a friend this summer, and because my friend is a cool person I didn’t have to pay for my ticket. By the time we were sitting down in our seats I’d been making jokes about the movie for weeks- pretty much ever since I’d seen the original trailer. I had basically made my mind up about the movie before going into it, and I definitely wasn’t expecting it to be good. I did, however, expect it to be an enjoyable failure. I was pleasantly surprised by just how enjoyable a failure it was.
I tend to enjoy bad movies for multiple reasons. The first is that bad movies are a really great learning opportunity, and they give a sort of unique lense for viewing actually good movies. I think watching bad movies has given me a better eye for picking out flaws in good films. The second reason for enjoying bad movies is the sheer hilarity I get from a truly badly put together film, and The Emoji Movie is ripe with that kind of humor for me.
The movie follows a “meh” emoji named Jean. Now, Jean is capable of feeling more than one emotion, which makes him a bad emoji. He goes on a quest to find a hacker emoji and hack himself into a normal meh emoji. This is the generic kids film setup of a unique person who doesn’t fit into his society and has to go on an adventure to fit in, but eventually finds out there’s strength in diversity. This plot setup has been commonly used in everything from Rudolph, to Frozen, to the X-Men, to every single forgettable kids film to come out in the last decade. It’s boring, cliche, and repetitive. I’m not saying it can’t be done well, there are tons of movies that do this same setup far better, the first three examples I provided are good proof that it can be done better.
Now, in this film Jean goes on an adventure through various apps to try and turn himself into a normal meh emoji. He adventures with his “friend” High Five and the hacker emoji: Jailbreak. These three don’t get along at all after their initial meeting, but suddenly become friends within a small span of a few minutes in order to further the plot. On their quest they run through the Just Dance app, Spotify, Dropbox- and each one of these locations is an advertisement. They showcase the app, show what’s there, and then they finish their time there and carry on their quest. It’s almost comical how forced some of the product placements are. I distinctly remember the scene where Jailbreak derails the dialog to talk about how great Dropbox is. The three main characters exist to showcase apps for the glorified advertisement that is this film.
There’s a side story involving Jean’s parents looking for him while he’s on his quest. Both of Jean’s parents are meh emojis also, and talk in a dull monotone voice that I think is supposed to be funny. They share several emotional (ha) scenes together, but their scenes don’t connect to the main plot in any way shape or form and just exist to advertise YouTube and Instagram. This side plot is weak, unnecessary, and their voices make it almost unbearably annoying.
Between all the product placement and advertising the movie is full of all sorts of strange inaccuracies that anyone with a smart phone will pick up on. Like when the main characters go into the trash folder on the phone, even though when you delete something on a phone it doesn’t go into a trash bin. Or when the phone is almost deleted but is suddenly restored by unplugging a “delete cable” which is something that doesn’t even exist. One of the most baffling inaccuracies is the inclusion of “trolls” as a gag in the film. Now, a troll is someone who bullies or teases online- in the most basic sense. The movie included trolls with the emojis and the other computerized characters, as if they were a part of the phone. This seems to imply that trolls aren’t real people but are pieces of code. These strange decisions helped destroy and cleverness or consistency that the world could’ve had in this film, and paired with the constant product placement and weak style of humor it created a disjointed mess of a film.
Despite all the strange decisions in this movie, I still believe it’s worth seeing. It’s a great example of a cliched and overdone kid’s film, and seeing it and thinking about it for a bit gives some great insight into what makes other movies good. Figuring out what doesn’t work is a great way of understanding what does work in actually good movies. Also, some of the scenes are just unintentionally hilarious. When Jean’s parents walked into the YouTube app- the video playing was Pen Pineapple Apple Pen, which is a video that went viral for about a week last year. Just seeing it playing was proof that the people who made the emoji movie have absolutely no idea what kids actually enjoy- and it leads to several scenes so unfunny and unaware that they somehow become funny.
The Emoji Movie is a total mess. It’s not funny, it’s not intelligent, and it’s basically just a big advertisement for a bunch of apps. That being said- I’d give this film a 5/10 just purely based on the enjoyment I got out of it, even if that enjoyment was more from how bad it was than anything else. I’d say, if you like film and are good at picking out flaws in movies, or if you’re a fan of causing pain to yourself, the Emoji Movie is definitely worth a watch.
I mean, it was probably just a bunch of people hoping for money, but that’s besides the point.
I saw this movie with a friend this summer, and because my friend is a cool person I didn’t have to pay for my ticket. By the time we were sitting down in our seats I’d been making jokes about the movie for weeks- pretty much ever since I’d seen the original trailer. I had basically made my mind up about the movie before going into it, and I definitely wasn’t expecting it to be good. I did, however, expect it to be an enjoyable failure. I was pleasantly surprised by just how enjoyable a failure it was.
I tend to enjoy bad movies for multiple reasons. The first is that bad movies are a really great learning opportunity, and they give a sort of unique lense for viewing actually good movies. I think watching bad movies has given me a better eye for picking out flaws in good films. The second reason for enjoying bad movies is the sheer hilarity I get from a truly badly put together film, and The Emoji Movie is ripe with that kind of humor for me.
The movie follows a “meh” emoji named Jean. Now, Jean is capable of feeling more than one emotion, which makes him a bad emoji. He goes on a quest to find a hacker emoji and hack himself into a normal meh emoji. This is the generic kids film setup of a unique person who doesn’t fit into his society and has to go on an adventure to fit in, but eventually finds out there’s strength in diversity. This plot setup has been commonly used in everything from Rudolph, to Frozen, to the X-Men, to every single forgettable kids film to come out in the last decade. It’s boring, cliche, and repetitive. I’m not saying it can’t be done well, there are tons of movies that do this same setup far better, the first three examples I provided are good proof that it can be done better.
Now, in this film Jean goes on an adventure through various apps to try and turn himself into a normal meh emoji. He adventures with his “friend” High Five and the hacker emoji: Jailbreak. These three don’t get along at all after their initial meeting, but suddenly become friends within a small span of a few minutes in order to further the plot. On their quest they run through the Just Dance app, Spotify, Dropbox- and each one of these locations is an advertisement. They showcase the app, show what’s there, and then they finish their time there and carry on their quest. It’s almost comical how forced some of the product placements are. I distinctly remember the scene where Jailbreak derails the dialog to talk about how great Dropbox is. The three main characters exist to showcase apps for the glorified advertisement that is this film.
There’s a side story involving Jean’s parents looking for him while he’s on his quest. Both of Jean’s parents are meh emojis also, and talk in a dull monotone voice that I think is supposed to be funny. They share several emotional (ha) scenes together, but their scenes don’t connect to the main plot in any way shape or form and just exist to advertise YouTube and Instagram. This side plot is weak, unnecessary, and their voices make it almost unbearably annoying.
Between all the product placement and advertising the movie is full of all sorts of strange inaccuracies that anyone with a smart phone will pick up on. Like when the main characters go into the trash folder on the phone, even though when you delete something on a phone it doesn’t go into a trash bin. Or when the phone is almost deleted but is suddenly restored by unplugging a “delete cable” which is something that doesn’t even exist. One of the most baffling inaccuracies is the inclusion of “trolls” as a gag in the film. Now, a troll is someone who bullies or teases online- in the most basic sense. The movie included trolls with the emojis and the other computerized characters, as if they were a part of the phone. This seems to imply that trolls aren’t real people but are pieces of code. These strange decisions helped destroy and cleverness or consistency that the world could’ve had in this film, and paired with the constant product placement and weak style of humor it created a disjointed mess of a film.
Despite all the strange decisions in this movie, I still believe it’s worth seeing. It’s a great example of a cliched and overdone kid’s film, and seeing it and thinking about it for a bit gives some great insight into what makes other movies good. Figuring out what doesn’t work is a great way of understanding what does work in actually good movies. Also, some of the scenes are just unintentionally hilarious. When Jean’s parents walked into the YouTube app- the video playing was Pen Pineapple Apple Pen, which is a video that went viral for about a week last year. Just seeing it playing was proof that the people who made the emoji movie have absolutely no idea what kids actually enjoy- and it leads to several scenes so unfunny and unaware that they somehow become funny.
The Emoji Movie is a total mess. It’s not funny, it’s not intelligent, and it’s basically just a big advertisement for a bunch of apps. That being said- I’d give this film a 5/10 just purely based on the enjoyment I got out of it, even if that enjoyment was more from how bad it was than anything else. I’d say, if you like film and are good at picking out flaws in movies, or if you’re a fan of causing pain to yourself, the Emoji Movie is definitely worth a watch.
Header Image Source: IMDB