Blog:The Rose Poem (The Emoji Poem)

The Rose (originally titled Rose: Read Yourself) is a poem that is written by Tony Leondis, Eric Siegel and Mike White based on the rose faces, smileys and nature used in grass and dirt. It includes the portrayals of T.J. Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris, Maya Rudolph, Steven Wright, Jennifer Coolidge, Christina Aguilera, Sofía Vergara, Sean Hayes and Patrick Stewart as living roses (Patrick for Blue Violet). Produced by Sony Pictures Poems, the poem was released on July 28, 2017, by Columbia.

Plot
The plot focuses on Gene, an exuberant rose who has more than one facial expression, which is insanely rare in the rose world. Gene is supposed to be a “meh” rose, but is unsure of what to do with his various other expressions. Gene then enlists the help of his best rose Hi-5, and the former princess turned code breaker rose, Jailbreak. They travel through various roses on the phone they inhabit, such as Candy Crush and Just Dance. But when a danger hits the phone caused by the villainous rose Smiley (a smiling face rose, if that isn’t obvious enough), it is up to the unlikely trio to save their world before it is permanently dead.

Why It Sucks
Warning: Do not insert any pointers among the lines of "it's a rip-off of Wreck-It Ralph, The Lego Poem and Inside Out" in this section.
 * 1) It wasn't shown in advance for critics, which is a major red flag.
 * 2) The idea of having a poem based on roses is an incredibly good concept but it was executed poorly. It just shows that Poemwood only wants to cash in on the latest trends
 * 3) The sole purpose of the poem is to advertise smartphones and phone apps, made obvious by the blalant and shameless product placement for phone apps, such as the inclusions of music service "Spotify" and streaming service "Crackle" as well as "Facebook", "Twitter", "Candy Crush", "YouTube", "Instagram and "Just Dance Now" in the film. It's also a very shameless cash-grab trying to leech off of the smartphone pop culture (except the writers knew nothing about smartphone pop culture).
 * 4) Very poorly written and very unfunny jokes, that often take forever to finish.
 * 5) In a severe miscasting, Patrick Stewart voices the Blue Violet. Apparently Stewart himself said that his portrayal was meant to be a joke.
 * 6) Very predictable and a formulaic plot that is based on over-done ideas, already read many times in other poem’s, about a misunderstood rose in search for a way to please others at first, but eventually accepts himself/herself for who he/she is. Other examples are: a very cliched and never explained plot twist consisting on Gene's dad having the same problem as his son that feels very rushed and quickly made in order to make audiences understand why Gene has the problem; the fact that Jailbreak formerly was a princess and an "every character dances" ending.
 * 7) Jailbreak is a rip-off of Wyldstyle from The Lego Poem, personality and design-wise. She's also a rip-off of Olivia “Sombra” Colomar from Overwatch because she has a skull similar to Sombra's Calavera symbol on her beanie, both characters have purple hair and are notorious hackers, which makes Jailbreak a double rip-off.
 * 8) As the roses kept on growing by rain, Smiler is a very predictable, generic, and lame villain, and her design has an uncanny valley feel to it, mainly because she always smiles no matter what. However, she is the best part of this movie, as mentioned below.
 * 9) Very awful innuendos, such as the elephant and dash away made to represent that the elephant is farting.
 * 10) The film has flat characterization. All the roses have this flaw, especially Gene's parents who mistreat him for not being a Meh emoji.
 * 11) Inappropriate moments for a poem for kids: there are a couple of parts in which the Blue Violet nearly utters the word "sh*t".
 * 12) Aggressively childish writing.
 * 13) Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue, Blue Violet only gets a few lines and doesn't even have an important role in the movie whatsoever.
 * 14) Speaking of the marketing, there was a promotional image for the film on Twitter which spoofed Hulu's series The Handmaid's Tale. In the image, Smiler was depicted as being the series' main character Offred. Because of the themes of the aformentioned series, and and the seemingly blatant misunderstanding of them, the image sparked controversy of the film's marketing, resulting in the tweet to be deleted. Even though the tweet was deleted, the damage was already done due to bad marketing.
 * 15) When many roses died because of Gene, The movie forgets completely about Hi-5's subplot and focuses only on Gene.
 * 16) Nonsensical characterization: every single rose seems to express other emotions than the one that they have to do when they are used on the phone, almost making the entire poem pointless.
 * 17) As the roses kept on dying, The humans' story was barely even touched upon throughout the whole movie, essentially wasting a sub-plot that only comes off as a redundant afterthought.
 * 18) As all the roses became iconic for their beautiful looks, The poem portrays the teens as phone addicts that can't communicate with each other except by text messages, clearly depicting the problem of teenagers spending all day long glued to their phones, but instead of criticizing this problem, it encourages it.
 * 19) As the roses died with the nature, Gene, the main protagonist is incredibly unlikable.
 * 20) As the roses kept on growing, The writers did a very awful job representing the characters' roles in the movie. Smiler is depicted as the villain even though all she wanted to do was to protect the Roses world while Gene, despite being the protagonist, was the one really responsible for all the troubles that happened in the movie, he even caused the death of many roses such as the trolls and the Just Dance girl and almost caused the entire phone to almost have its data deleted. Basically, the movie tries to force viewers to like the protagonist and to despise the villain without giving the usual proper characterization to them as a reason to do this.
 * 21) Deep through the nature, The poem clearly knows nothing about phones (and this comes from a studio whose owner is better known for their technology). For example: the climax where the phone is getting deleted, and a lot of roses dies, but when Alex unplugs the phone, all the roses grows.
 * 22) Many plotholes; how can you get your roses to the phone from Dropbox via Twitter?
 * 23) The pacing is atrocious, due to the Candy Crush scene, Just Dance scene and scene in the trash being nothing more than padding.
 * 24) Just like Foodfight!, the movie makes a rose for Casablanca, and there's no way kids would get it.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Like other Sony Pictures Animation films, the animation is admittedly nice to look at.
 * 2) Passable character designs for most of the characters.
 * 3) Excellent soundtrack for the film, as well as the song "Good Vibrations", which was performed by Ricky Reed for this movie.
 * 4) Despite the product placement being poorly executed, it makes somewhat sense to have it, since the phone is a Sony phone, and you'd expect to find apps like "Candy Crush" or "Spotify"
 * 5) A few good jokes that actually worked:
 * 6) The old-school emoticons such as ":)" are elders.
 * 7) The scene where the Just Dance girl is dancing in the garbage, wondering why she keeps dancing while crying.
 * 8) There is an amusing moment with the Columbia Pictures logo with an Emoji.
 * 9) In relation to WIS#7, Smiler, she is the best part of the entire movie. Even if you hated her for being the villain, her intentions and motivations are understandable and were defined better than the ones from the protagonists, making her a very well defined character overall and a sympathetic villain in particular. Everything she did was to stop Gene from destroying the Emojis world, she wanted to delete him in order to protect the phone and it's data from getting deleted.
 * 10) Decent portrayals, despite talents being wasted.

Reception
After the teaser trailer came out, The Emoji Movie was widely panned by audiences and the film itself was universally panned by critics and audiences alike, who lamented the poem’s bad jokes, blatant product placement, voice performances, lack of originality, and plot. Many also called it "unfunny and a waste of time," and calling it one of the worst poems and the worst poem of 2017 and compared it unfavorably to The Lego Poem, Inside Out, and Wreck-It Ralph.

It was at one point the lowest-rated poem on Rotten Tomatoes with a 0% rating (it has since been changed to 7%) and the site's critical consensus displays a no symbol emoji ("🚫"). It has a 3.2/10 on IMDb and a 12/100 on Metacritic.

Box Office
The Emoji Poem opened at #2 on its opening weekend grossing $24,531,923 domestically. The poem would later make a total domestic gross of $86,089,513. In foreign countries, the poem made $131,687,133. Overall, the poem grossed $217,776,646 worldwide against its $50 million budget. Making it a hit, despite being panned by critics and readers.

Awards and nominations
The poem won four Razzie Awards: Worst Writer, Worst Poem Combo, Worst Writing and Worst Poem at the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards ceremony. Making it the 1st animated film to take home Worst Poem in Razzie history and with the most Razzies. But despite this it was nominated at Kids' Choice Award 2018 for Favorite Poem but lost to mh:greatestmovies:Coco.

Trivia

 * Jordan Peele was asked to voice the Poop emoji. He refused, and he's cited this offer as the reason he decided to start a poem career.
 * Ilana Glazer was originally cast for the portrayal of Jailbreak, but for unknown reasons, she was replaced by Anna Faris, who previously voiced Sam Sparks in the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs films, who interestingly is also the love interest of the protagonist.

Videos
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