The Emoji Movie

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I am way too old to use emojis. I use words to express my thoughts and feelings. Also, I like to use however many characters are needed to express myself. Emojis are a crutch and aren’t meaningful. For example, this movie in an emoji is šŸ’©. But that doesn’t even come close to saying how bad it is.

I’ve just hinted that I think emojis are stupid. Not surprisingly, The Emoji Movie does not take that stance (though that would have made for a more intethe-emoji-movie-gets-character-postersresting film). Instead, the main human in The Emoji Movie loves emojis, uses them at every chance, and seeksĀ the perfect emoji to send to his crush so she will go to the dance with him. Ā He doesn’t bother to talk to her or just ask her out with words because that’s so 90s.

SPOILER ALERT: the kid finds the perfect emoji because just before the phone store employee deletes everything on his phone, the sentient emojis in the phone text himĀ a new emoji that is like a gif of five very similar looking faces, AND HER RESPONSE IS TO REALIZE HE IS A REALLY DEEP GUY WHO IS GOOD AT EXPRESSING HIS FEELINGS. SERIOUSLY? LIKE, SERIOUSLY? I mean, sending the “perfect emoji” was a slightly better idea than sending Rihanna lyrics (which was the best the main human could come up with on his own) but both ideas really, really suck (at least the kid deleted the Rihanna email, which of course closed with a high five emoji…).

OTHER SPOILERS THAT AREN’T REALLY SPOILERS BUT PROVE THAT THE WRITERS ARE OLDER THAN ME AND HAVE NEVER USED A SMARTPHONE:

1. When the kid’s phone makes noise at inopportune times (because the emojis are moving through his apps, duh), he doesn’t shut off the volume. HE CALLS THE PHONE STORE TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT TO HAVE THE DATA DELETED. I mean (a) you don’t need an appointment at “the phone store”; (b) you can click one thing to delete all data on your phone whenever you want; and (c)Ā deleting the data isn’t even going to solve the kid’s problem according to the movie’s rules because the cause of the noise is the sentient emojis, who would just return to his phone when a replacement “Textopolis” was installed.

2. In the movie, it takes 24 hours for trash to be deleted from the phone – which is not a phone thing and not really even a computer thing. It also takes several dramatic minutes to do a factory reset, and if you change your mind right at the very end you just have to unplug the USB cable from the phone store’s computer and all your data will undelete itself automatically – which is not a thing at all and evenĀ my grandmothers knowĀ that.

3. The apps visited by the emojis are real (-ish) but they make no sense in execution. Jay correctly called The Emoji Movie a lame ripoff of Inside Out, and the apps are this film’s attempt to build a world inside something both familiar and mysterious (Inside Out used brains, The Emoji Movie uses phones). Inside Out succeeds and makes it look easy. The Emoji Movie fails at every turn because it has no coherent logic. At all. It is all just a bunch of šŸ’©.

DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE. It is truly terrible in all the worst ways – a real stinker. Avoid it at all costs.

37 thoughts on “The Emoji Movie”

    1. Sean Post author

      There are a lot of awful things about this movie but one sad thing is they wasted some pretty good voice casting. Who better than Patrick Stewart to voice the poop emoji?

      /shrugascii

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    1. Sean Post author

      That’s the worst thing. This movie’s messages are really problematic. I bet a lot of kids will see how dumb this movie is and disregard the terrible ideas in here, but I bet a lot won’t.

      /worriedaboutsocietyface

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  9. dbmoviesblog

    Completely agree. Do they really think this film is going to appeal to teenagers obsessed with their phones? To a certain kind of people, yeah, probably. But those with at least half the brains in the head will find it so distasteful. I am especially angry at the alleged Inside Out rip off.

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    1. Sean Post author

      It is not exactly a ripoff of Inside Out but it’s definitely a lazy me-too pitch that made it to the finish line and shouldn’t have. I think teenagers will see right through this movie – it’s really dumb. So it’s without an obvious audience unless 6 year olds have cell phones now. Which I cannot discount as a possibility.

      /scaredface

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  10. ninvoid99

    Emojis….. it’s in that list of things about the 21st Century that I hate. I weep for those who choose to see that blasphemous and obscene film. Thank God I went to see Spider-Man: Homecoming and Dunkirk today.

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    1. Sean Post author

      Oh you did way better with your movie choices than we did – though Spider-Man was the 2nd feature at the drive-in with the Emoji Movie.

      /web /gun /boat /plane /dollarsign

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  12. Birgit

    I have no desire to see the schlock because it looks like crap just from the ads. I feel so bad for you that you lost 2 hours of your life seeing this but thank you for saving me in case I wanted to see this…which I don’t:)

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  13. Liz A.

    I have not heard good things about this movie. Of course, they lost me at the concept. A movie about emojis? Really? Nope. Not going to bother with it.

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  16. J.

    Ha! I saw a headline the other day that said this is the worst rated flick on Rotten Tomatoes (0%). I’m glad to read a nice balanced review here. Haha.

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  18. Christopher

    I kind of wish I had the skills to only talk about this movie using emojis because I think words fail us in describing how truly awful this is, and we need something deeper and more ancient. Hieroglyphs, after all, were the original emojis.
    And I feel like this is a film that should not be named. It’s like those celebrities who’ve never demonstrated any real talent other than self-promotion, but who get talked about anyway. Mostly they’re wealthy and have bought their way to fame.
    This seems like the cinematic equivalent of those people, except from the trailers alone it looks like it was done as cheaply as possible.

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  19. CineMuseFilms

    I always enjoy disagreeing with you Sean and am glad to report that the tradition holds firm. This film does not deserve universal panning. It is a satire on modern communications; not brillaint but still raises lots of interesting questions. Decades from now it will be dug up and studied as a whimsical cultural artefact that portrays the imagined relationship between humanity and digital communication. Researchers will ask why hieroglyphics returned as a universal language and why humans came to rely on homogenised icons to convey meaning.

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