THE EMOJI MOVIE - REVIEW


Released earlier this year to the sound of mass groans and facepalms, The Emoji Movie was Sony Pictures' attempt at "Pixar-ing" a very current trend despite the fact it'll probably look and feel incredibly dated only 5 years from now.

The main concept for this movie, a world inside all our smartphones where emojis live and show up whenever their specific emotion is called upon, might have been original and interesting had it been done before Inside Out or even Monsters Inc. Or any Pixar movie, for that matter. As it stands, The Emoji Movie is built upon a fatally flawed idea and whatever comes next is poisoned by that. There's also the fact that emojis don't exactly lend themselves to interesting character designs: mostly, the film just adds arms and legs to them and calls it a day in the hope that the celebrity voices will somehow distract from that laziness. The cast includes T.J. Miller as Gene (the "Meh" emoji), James Corden as Hi-5 (the open hand emoji) and Anna Faris as Jailbreak, a moody codebreaker later revealed to be a familiar emoji. Infamously, Patrick Stewart pops up as the poop emoji but this is pretty much a waste (pun intended), the one good casting choice being Steven Wright as Mel Meh.

To say that The Emoji Movie is derivative would be a gross understatement. You can point to every single aspect of this movie and compare it to something that already exists and is far better. The story is basically nothing more than an Inside Out rip-off with some of The LEGO Movie and Wreck-It Ralph thrown in there, along with other Pixar movies, of course. Visually, this offers nothing new and, while it's not an ugly movie and should be colourful enough to please really young viewers, there is something strangely repulsive about seeing these emojis involuntarily burst into other emotions. Incidentally, it's the more daring jokes that work the best: this really should have been a dark and twisted, very self-aware Sausage Party-style animated film instead of a vapid, predictable family-friendly B-movie that'll please pretty much nobody unless they really are die-hard fans of emojis. This is a disappointingly cynical film that could have easily been a genuinely funny satire.

There are definitely worse animated films out there and, at the very least, The Emoji Movie has a couple of clever lines in it and a nice colour pallet. This doesn't, however, save a mostly charmless and unfunny film that glorifies kids' current smartphone addiction and, in fact, encourages it.

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