The Emoji Movie exists with two main objectives: to promote smartphone apps to users and to appeal to a younger audience. While it did succeed in reminding some viewers about the popularity of apps like Candy Crush, it ultimately failed to connect with its intended audience.
It felt like a group of middle aged studio executives sat down a focus group of random 12 to 16-year olds and asked them how and why they use their smart phones.
The movie starts with a high school freshman who is nervous about talking to a girl, despite having her phone number. He tries to send her a “Meh” emoji but ends up making a mistake. The main character, Gene, is a “Meh” emoji, following in the footsteps of his parents.
When emojis are selected by the user, they are scanned, and the vaguely human looking faces must freeze in their chosen expression.
Due to a wacky mistake, Gene ends up making the wrong facial expression.
His mistake was laying heavy on his non-existent shoulders; Gene goes off on a quest to find himself. He wants to be the emoji he was destined to be and along the way picks up a one liner expelling side kick in the shape of a high five and a love interest. The high five character is only in this movie to toss out the odd one liners, hoping that one of them will make the audience laugh. When the one liners include such classics as ‘hashtag,’ he was relatively unsuccessful.
The love interest Jailbreak is an emoji which is uninterested in fitting in, she wants to do her own thing and even has her own plan for her life. Or at least she does until the end when she decides to give up on her hope and dreams to stay with Gene and become a good citizen of this boring world.
Sure this movie looks like a ridiculous and over the top case of out of touch adults trying to find something to market to teens but the writing is so boring that I can’t imagine many teens making it all the way through the movie, even ironically.
With sufficient rewrites and talent, there could have been potential in this movie. However, the jokes lack punch, the animation lacks vibrancy, and for a good portion of the film, audiences are left wondering if Sir Patrick Stewart enjoys his new boat, as there seems to be no other reason for his character to be present. Perhaps it’s a blue boat.
The animation in the movie is rather chaotic and confusing. Given that most of us either own a smartphone or are familiar with them enough to recognize what the screens look like, the portrayal of digital interfaces in the film should have been more coherent.
For some reason, instead of making the backgrounds in the movie look even a little bit like the phones we know so well, everything feels like a cheap knock off. As though they wanted to recreate the home screen but altered everything just enough to keep the visuals vague and dull.
Even the colors seem to miss the mark in this movie. Somehow, they come across as dull and uninteresting. Perhaps there should be an award category for “Most Boring Colors in a Film.”
The plot feels like one we’ve seen countless times before in much better movies. Without significant effort, there was little chance that this movie would contribute anything new or meaningful to the storyline.
Stop me if you’ve heard the one about the character who doesn’t fit in with his peers and goes on an adventure only to return home and discover that his differences are what make him special. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the writers turned Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer into a boring movie about smart phones.
Sometimes it seems as though the writers want to mock the effect that modern technology has on our lives but only a few frames later they are promoting some app that I’m sure is available in the app store. This movie is terrible and not in an enjoyable ‘The Room’ kind of way; The Emoji Movie is dull from start to finish.
The most intriguing aspect of the movie seemed to be the buzz generated by YouTuber Jacksfilms. Even he appeared to struggle to maintain a straight face while discussing it.
Don’t waste your time folks! See Dunkirk instead.