A blatant rip-off of Toy Story, The LEGO Movie, Wreck-It
Ralph and a dozen other animated films that actually tried, The
Emoji Movie is a soulless 90 minute commercial for Sony products. Unlike
those other actually creative movies, The Emoji Movie is about the
importance of texting. Specifically, the importance of using simplistic
pictures of happy faces to text.
The “film” follows Gene (voiced by TJ Miller), a “meh” emoji
who wants to use more than one emotion to express himself, which is frowned upon
in Textopoilis, where all the emojis live and work for Alex, their phone’s
owner. (Alex, for the record, is his own special brand of garbage that I’ll get
to later.) Textopolis is comprised of nothing but the laziest puns and half-ideas.
Worst of all, the movie is written in such a way that each flatlining joke is
accompanied with a line about how funny it was. It seems to be aiming for wit
or subversive silliness, but fires its shots so lazily that it all just lands
firmly at annoying.
Faced with the threat of deletion for being different (what
a very subtle piece of commentary) Gene goes on a typical hero’s journey to
“fix” himself, and become the mono-emotive “Meh” that society wants him to be. The
strangest thing is, there is clearly a scrap of an emotionally engaging idea
here. At its most basic structural level, this could have been a concept if any
thought or effort was put into it. But instead Sony made a Sony ad.
On his quest, Gene meets Hi-5 (James Corden), a high-fiving
hand emoji that is also an outcast after being bumped from Alex’s favorite
emojis list. Remember when I said that this movie was never funny and was
instead shockingly annoying? Well, Hi-5 is the king of this. This character is
Rob Schneider-level infuriating as he interjects his grating catchphrases and
pop culture references every couple seconds to make sure that you are never in
danger of actually enjoying this movie. Together, our heroes travel through the
various apps of Alex’s phone, trying to find Jailbreak (Anna Farris), a hacker
emoji who they believe can help get them fixed in the mythical cloud.
Jailbreak is a very special kind of Underwritten Female Role,
where she constantly talks about how she is a strong character with defined
traits and objectives, as opposed to actually being any of those things. Much
like Hi-5’s use of hashtags, Jailbreak uses modern feminist ideals as a
catchphrase, and it’s really off-putting. For example, there’s one scene where
she just explains why mansplaining is problematic to society. It’s not a joke.
It doesn’t do anything to further the scene. It’s just a nonsequitur comment
about how women’s opinions matter… and while it comes out of nowhere, it’s
still a decent point. However, The Emoji Movie does not actually
follow these ideals expressed by its female lead. For example, let’s circle
back to Alex being a garbage person.
Alex is not only a studio executive’s idea of what a
teenager is, but he’s also just a perfect personification of why people don’t
like millennials. Alex’s big conflict is that he likes the prettiest girl at his
school, but lacks the confidence to text her the right emojis. He doesn’t want
to talk to her in person, he doesn’t even want to have a conversation with him
through text. Instead, he believes that sending her a good emoji will win her
heart, and this movie seems to agree with that idea. The lead human female
character has no discernable character traits of her own. She would love our
hero if he could only send her the right picture of a happy face. We only even
learn her name because Alex has used it as a password in one of the apps the
emojis explore. It’s actually really fascinating to me how much the filmmakers
don’t care about logic. Their lead female emoji does nothing but talk about
feminism, and then their human subplot seems to go out of its way to ignore
every word of that. They wrote a female character who expresses the dangers of
ignoring what women have to say, and then ignored what she said. It’s insane.
Gene, Hi-5, and Jailbreak spend the next 40 minutes or so
hopping from app to app, in scenes that I suppose where supposed to play as
creative looks at popular games and services from a clever and whimsical new
point of view. In reality, these moments are merely transparent bits of product
placement for the smartphone apps licensed by Sony. Every misstep our heroes
make leads to a “hilarious” glitch happening with Alex’s phone, like sending
confusing images to his contacts or playing loud music at inappropriate times.
The stakes are raised when Alex makes an appointment with tech support to have
his phone reprogramed. Will the emojis make it to the cloud in time, or will
Textopolis be deleted and refreshed?
The thing is, it should
be deleted. Setting aside my own utter distain for this movie, if a person’s
phone was suffering the malfunctions that Alex’s is, it would be a deeply
broken cell phone that needs to be fixed. This is one of the biggest problems
with The
Emoji Movie. When technology doesn’t work the way it’s designed to, it
is undeniably broken. Unlike exploring the secret lives of toys like Pixar did,
when exploring tech, there is a black and white, yes or no, binary to whether
or not something is working or isn’t. This isn’t like the squeaky toy losing
its squeak. This is his phone not working. It’s hard to get emotionally
invested in a world that I myself would go and get fixed, much like Alex
intends to.
The human teenager characters are constantly on their
phones, texting emojis to each other, speaking in hashtags, taking selfies, and
enjoying the wonderful products that Sony has to offer. At one point they
actually express their dislike for words. Obviously this is supposed to be a
humorous exaggeration of the world that modern teenagers occupy, but there has
to be some center of truth to any satire, and if this is a mirror of the world
we live in, then I am deeply sad. I suppose it’s a nice change of pace to be
bothered by an element of society’s downfall that doesn’t have to do with our
modern political climate. Again, though, if that’s the most positive thing I
have to say about this movie, there’s a problem here.
Ultimately, the majority of The Emoji Movie is cold
and corporate, unfunny and uncreative, and mostly just hard to sit through.
That being said, every now and then the movie becomes so maddeningly misguided
that it crosses into being somewhat surreal, and those moments are rather
enjoyable. For example, there’s a rather serious subplot about an emoji
marriage in jeopardy, and whether or not these two emojis should get an emoji
divorce, and this scene is kind of incredible in the way that sometimes
nightmares can be. Otherwise, beyond these occasional instances of blind
absurdity, The Emoji Movie falls incredibly flat.
I don’t even know what audience Sony was shooting for here. Is
it teenagers like Alex? Is it younger children? Is it adults who will
understand the pop culture references? I honestly struggle to imagine any of
these groups enjoying more than 10 minutes of this. We, as a species, can do
better. We can make better animated movies than this. Movies that won’t
perpetuate harmful ideas. Maybe even movies that have something to say other
than “Buy Sony.”
The Emoji Movie is a bleak, cynical, and corporate waste of an
idea that left me feeling deeply sad.
1 out of 5
