The Emoji Movie

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The Emoji Movie

"🖕👉💩" — Nostalgia Critic

Genre:	Comedy Sci-fi Animated Adventure
Directed By:	Tony Leondis
Produced By:	Michelle Raimo Kouyate
Written By:	Tony Leondis Eric Siegel
Based On:	Emojis
Starring:	T.J. Miller James Corden Anna Faris Maya Rudolph Steven Wright Jennifer Coolidge Christina Aguilera Sofía Vergara Sean Hayes Patrick Stewart
Photography:	Color
Distributed By:	Columbia Pictures Sony Pictures Releasing
Release Date:	July 23, 2017 (Regency Village Theatre) July 28, 2017 (United States)
Runtime:	86 minutes
Country:	United States
Language:	English
Budget:	$50 million
Box Office:	$217.8 million

The Emoji Movie (initially titled Emojimovie: Express Yourself^[1]) is a 2017 American computer-animated science-fiction comedy film directed by Tony Leondis, written by Leondis, Eric Siegel and Mike White, produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. It is based on emoji faces, smileys and graphics used in electronic messages.

The film premiered on July 23, 2017 at the Regency Village Theatre and was theatrically released in the United States on July 28, 2017.

Plot

Hidden inside a smartphone, the bustling city of Textopolis is home to all emojis. Each emoji has only one facial expression, except for Gene, an exuberant emoji with multiple expressions. Determined to become "normal" like the other emojis, Gene enlists the help of his best friend Hi-5 and a notorious code breaker called Jailbreak. During their travels through the other apps, the three emojis discover a great danger that could threaten their phone's very existence.

Why It Sucks

Warning: Do not put any pointers among the lines of "It rips off/steals elements of/from Wreck-It Ralph, The Lego Movie, and/or Inside Out..." or "Sony cancelled the Popeye movie for this..." (neither of which are true in the slightest) in this section.

The basic concept of having a movie based on emojis is, while really not the worst concept, incredibly bland and confusing; the fact that the concept has a rather botched execution doesn't exactly help.
The film feels more like an advertisement for phone apps and smartphones, as it is overloaded with product placements from real-life phone apps, including Spotify, WeChat, Facebook, Candy Crush, YouTube, Instagram and Just Dance Now; it also tries to leech off the smartphone popular culture, even though the writers might not have done enough research about smartphone popular culture despite Sony Corporation, the parent company of Sony Pictures Animation that, therefore, owns the rights to this film, being known for their technology and Xperia smartphones.
- On the topic of the film feeling like an advertisement for phone apps and smartphones, it is made even more blatantly obvious by Gene introducing smartphones to the audience and then describing how great emojis apparently are in the opening scene, as well as when it is being explained how to play Candy Crush after Gene, Hi-5 and Jailbreak arrive there before they begin playing the game to free Gene.
- In an interview for the film on the official YouTube channel for Sony Pictures Animation, director Tony Leondis stated that he wanted to incorporate real-life apps into the movie^[2]; while product placement can be used well in some films, it should be taken into consideration the fact that not everyone is going to like it, as some might assume they are watching an ad instead of a film.
- On the topic of not knowing specific details, The Emoji Movie clearly knows nothing about phones (and ironically, this comes from a studio whose parent company is better known for their technology and Xperia smartphones); in the climax, when the phone is in the process of its factory reset, several apps get deleted, but after Alex unplugs the phone, the aforementioned deleted apps get restored. Upon deleting an app, it is permanently gone and there is no way of getting it back... unless you re-install it, that is.
  - The film also portrays teenagers as phone addicts who heavily refuse to communicate with each other aside from text messages, but instead of criticizing this problem... it encourages it.
Poor attempts at humor which often take forever to finish, with many of them coming across as either poorly-written, immature, disgusting or unfunny; one example of this is one scene where Hi-5 throws up a corn candy before putting it back into his mouth and later throwing it up again.
- One insulting and tasteless joke in the scene at the "loser lounge" depicts a fishcake emoji who sounds like a person with a disability.
- Many of the jokes also come across as rather stereotypical; one major example of this is in the scene with the monkey emojis in the first act, where they begin to act like, well... monkeys after their statement of how they are busy doing "monkey business".
- Even the innuendos are scummy, particularly one shot with the elephant and dashing away emojis, which is supposed to represent how the elephant is farting.
- Some of the jokes suffer from being on-the-nose, with one scene depicting a shrimp emoji joining his fellow shrimp emojis in a vehicle... resembling a shrimp cocktail.
- Perhaps the most unfunny examples of humor hinge around the one emotion each non-Gene and non-Mel emoji character has to represent; for example, in the scene in the YouTube app, Mary states, "Don't blame me for this, Mel, I am hopping mad at you. See?", and she makes a more tired face rather than an angry face.
Patrick Stewart was severely miscast as Poop, the poop emoji; apparently, Stewart himself said that his casting was meant to be a joke.
The story is very predictable and formulaic, as it is about a misunderstood character who accepts oneself for who they are; it also features clichés used in other films, particularly the never-explained reveal of Mel having the same problem as his son (which feels rather rushed as an attempt to make audiences understand why Gene has this problem), alongside the fact that there is an ending where everyone dances.
- Even Hi-5's motivation for joining Gene is generic, as he just wants to be popular among the other emojis once more.
- Jailbreak is an obvious clone of Wyldstyle from The Lego Movie, in terms of personality and character design; she also shares too much in common with Olivia "Sombra" Colomar from Overwatch as both characters are notorious hackers.
Almost all of the emoji characters suffer from several issues:
- All of the non-Gene and non-Mel emojis have rather flat characterizations, as they are only supposed to feel the emotions they represent; almost every emoji character has this flaw, especially Mary, who mistreats her son for his problem.
  - The characterization is also inconsistent, as every single emoji seems to express other emotions than the one that they have to do when they are used on the phone, and as a result, the entire plot is pointless.
    - Even Smiler is inconsistently portrayed; she initially gives a "be yourself" advice to the other emojis, and later sees Gene as a malfunction as he is a multi-expressional emoji.
  - Gene Meh, the main protagonist, is an incredibly generic and basic protagonist who wants to fit in but has something that gets in his way.
  - The romantic relationship between Gene and Jailbreak is also rather forced and bland.
- They also suffer from rather poor representation; Smiler is depicted as the antagonist, even though all she intended to do was to protect Textopolis from being deleted; similarly, Gene is depicted as the main protagonist, despite him being the one responsible for most of the problems that occurred to the point where he almost caused the entire phone to have its data be wiped. Basically, the film tries to force its audience to sympathize with the protagonist and to root against the villain without giving them the usual proper characterization as a reason to do this.
  - Not helping is that neither Gene nor Jailbreak show any mercy for Akiko Glitter and everyone else who was deleted from existence.
  - On the topic of sympathizing with the protagonists, it was already hard to sympathize with Hi-5, as he was already self-centered and arrogant by the time he is introduced in the film.
Several scenes are rather inappropriate for a film targeted towards children, particularly when Poop nearly utters the word "shit" before it cuts away.
At several points in the film specific details in the background feel rather distracting; for example, the first scene in the film is riddled with several message bubbles which appear as the characters communicate with one another, which gets in the way of the story the film is trying to tell. Some of the details also come across as rather nonsensical, with Alex being stated to have a social security number, which is very questionable for a fourteen-year-old freshman in high school.
False advertising: Despite the heavy marketing of Poop on posters and in the trailers, this character, voiced by Patrick Stewart, only gets a few lines and barely even gets to have an important role in the movie whatsoever.
- On the topic of the marketing, there was a promotional image for the film on Twitter which spoofed the Hulu original series The Handmaid's Tale. In the image, Smiler was depicted as being the series' main character Offred; because of the themes of the aforementioned series, 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.
The movie completely forgets about Hi-5's subplot of becoming a favorite once more and focuses only on Gene until the end.
Jailbreak claims that female emojis are being stereotyped as only princesses and brides, but it falls flat on its face upon taking into consideration there are several emojis in the film who are female, including Mary and Smiler, and yet almost none of them are princesses or brides; in fact, Smiler was even the original emoji and founder!
The voice acting is shockingly mediocre, even for a Sony Pictures Animation film; as nearly everyone constantly underacts and sounds as if they just want to get out of the project, with the exception of Maya Rudolph, who actually goes about overacting.
The film feels the apparent "need" to spout random and dated slang (even by near-late 2010s' standards), especially when Gene and Hi-5 mention "#truth" and "#blessed".
Excruciating dialogue.
Much of the events of the film are rather pointless, as Gene, Hi-5 and Jailbreak can go around the apps rather than through them to reach their destination and thus it would've taken much less time to get there had they gone around the apps instead. This was done just to pad out the movie's runtime.
- What makes the story even more pointless is when it is taken into consideration that Alex will eventually decide to replace his phone with a new one.
- Another large portion of the story, specifically the climax, is pointless, since Alex does not need tech support to wipe his phone, it is more than easy to do it himself.
There are issues with the pacing, as it has a hard time maintaining balance between the four main subplots, focusing on Gene, Alex, Smiler and the former's parents, ultimately resulting in several scenes being either too fast or too slow; this is extremely noticeable in the climax, which happens way too quickly.
Similar to Foodfight!, the film unnecessarily references Casablanca, something children would not get.
The film wants its audience to believe emojis are more important than actual words, which is a false moral; for example, in the opening scene, Gene basically mentions how, "Emojis are the most important thing in the history of communication," and Alex's friend later states, "Words aren't cool." It is also rather hypocritical, given the film was very obviously written with words.
Uneven and uncanny designs for the characters, with Gene resembling a reject of Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc., and Smiler always, well... literally smiling no matter what.
Dated references to popular culture and Internet phenomena, specifically the music video for "PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen)" by Pikotaro briefly appearing in the scene in the YouTube app; one can also clearly hear "Watch Me" by Silento briefly playing in the background during the scene in the Spotify app.
At one point the film seems to preach to feminism, when Jailbreak complains about how "women are always coming up with stuff that men are taking credit for."
The film also features some anachronisms:
- The Hammer emoji appears as a judge's gavel during specific scenes; it resembles Apple's original graphic for the iPhone, which changed with iOS 6 in 2012.
- While most of the emojis in the film are part of the set standardized by Unicode, Toaster, Broom and Disco Ball were not as of mid-2017. The Fortune Cookie and Takeout Box emojis were officially added to the Unicode Standard in June 2017, a month before the movie came out, so they would not have been on phones during filming, although it is possible that they added them during the last minute.

Redeeming Qualities

Like many of the other films from Sony Pictures Animation, the animation is solid and sometimes even creative.
- To add to this, despite the overuse of blatant and obvious product placement, the way the animators were able to create the world of the phone and the different apps were well done.
Excellent soundtrack for the film composed by Patrick Doyle (who also did the soundtrack for Brave and Artemis Fowl); in particular, "Good Vibrations" by Ricky Reed is decent.
The scene at Instagram where Mel and Mary make up, with the former opening up to the latter and revealing his inner-emotions to her, explaining how he kept them bottled-up inside and how he was afraid of showing them, is very emotional; it is also paced properly in comparison to almost every other scene in the film, and the conversation between both Mel and Mary feels organic, it feels like a conversation between two parents going through problems.
Decent cinematography.
As weak as much of the attempts at humor are, there are some that worked:
1. Old-school emoticons, specifically ":)", being portrayed as elders in one scene.
2. One scene where Akiko Glitter is dancing in the trash, wondering why she keeps dancing while crying.
3. There is an amusing moment with the Columbia Pictures opening logo with an emoji.
Smiler is well-developed and sympathetic as a character, as her intentions and motivations are understandable and were defined better than from the other characters. Everything she did was to stop Gene from essentially destroying the emojis' world; she wanted to delete him in order to protect the phone and its data from getting deleted.
Despite the performances from much of the actors being below average, T.J. Miller's performance as Gene stands out decently.
There is one decent reference to the Atari game Pong, despite it feeling a bit out-of-place.

Reception

Pre-released response

On December 20, 2016, the teaser trailer was released, which received overwhelming criticism from social media users, collecting almost 22,000 "dislikes" against 4,000 "likes" within the first 24 hours of its release. On May 16, 2017, the second trailer was released, which also received an extremely negative reception. The posters also received overwhelming criticism as well.

Critical and audiences response

After its release, The Emoji Movie was universally panned by critics and audiences alike, who criticized the script, humor, blatant product placement, voice performances, lack of originality, and plot; many also called it "unfunny and a waste of time," and compared it unfavorably to The Lego Movie, the Academy Award-wininng Inside Out and Wreck-It Ralph. Several major outlets called it one of the worst films of 2017 and also the worst animated movie.

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 0%^[3]; it has since then been changed to a 7% rating, based on 131 reviews, with an average rating of 2.67/10. The site's critical consensus displays a single no symbol emoji ("🚫") in place of text. It has a 3.3/10 on IMDb and a 12/100 on Metacritic, indicating "overwhelming dislike"; it is the lowest-rated animated film of all time on Metacritic. The film also received 1.2 rating on Letterboxd.

Box office

The Emoji Movie opened at #2 on its opening weekend grossing $24,531,923 domestically. The film would later make a total domestic gross of $86,089,513. In foreign countries, the film made $131,687,133. Overall, the film grossed $217,776,646 worldwide against its $50 million budget, making it a box office hit.

Awards and nominations

The Emoji Movie won four Razzie Awards: Worst Director (Tony Leondis), Worst Screen Combo (any two obnoxious emojis), Worst Screenplay and Worst Picture at the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards ceremony. Making it the 1st animated film to take home Worst Picture in Razzie history and with the most Razzies. But despite this it was nominated at Kids' Choice Award 2018 for Favorite Animated Movie but lost to the Pixar animated film Coco.

Trivia

Jordan Peele was asked to voice Poop; he refused, and he has cited this offer as the reason he decided to start a directorial career.^[4]
Ilana Glazer was originally cast for the role of Jailbreak^[5], 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 coincidentally is also the love interest of the protagonist.
- Coincidentally, both T.J Miller and Anna Faris also play roles in Yogi Bear; similarly, T.J Miller and James Corden played roles in Gulliver's Travels, released around the same time as Yogi Bear.
The Emoji Movie, surprisingly, took two years to make.^[6]
It is first animated film to win the Worst Picture Award; it had also won the most Razzies to date.