The Emoji Movie Retrospective

It’s been 974 days since I walked into Cineworld and purchased a ticket for The Emoji Movie. And there’s not been a single day since then that I have not thought about the film.

The Emoji Movie was announced in 2016, no doubt riding on the highs on The Lego Movie. At the time there was a lot of scepticism. The Lego Movie was a huge success, critically and at the box office, but what if that was just a one-off?

The Emoji Movie was officially released on the 4th of August 2017 to an overwhelmingly negative critical response. The film famously was stuck at 0% for a long time on Rotten Tomatoes until Betsy Bozdech’s review bumped it up to an impressive 3%. Since then the film has increased a further 4% from critics. The film’s been widely considered as one of the worst films ever, sitting at position 41 on IMDB’s lowest rated movies.

After watching over 2 hours of content made by YouTubers, watching all the behind the scenes clips and the film countless times, I have the definitive answer.

What happens in the movie?

The film stars T.J. Miller as the “Meh” emoji, Gene. Unlike most other face emojis, Gene is expressive and can be happy, excited, sad and loving. To the rest of his world however, this makes him a freak.

After he causes an accident and is sentenced to death, he and Hi-5 (James Corden) escape the text app to find a hacker. This hacker is Jailbreak (Anna Faris) who helped a princess escape before. Gene hopes Jailbreak can make Gene only a meh, removing most of his emotions, and Hi-5 hopes he can be one of the “favourites” again. Jailbreak agrees since Gene’s ability means she can escape from the phone onto the cloud. Smiler (Maya Rudolph) sends anti-virus bots to delete them so peace can be restored. Also, Gene’s parents attempt to find him and make him return so they can look after him.

We follow our three leads as they travel from Candy Crush, to Just Dance to dropbox, all the while escaping the bots that Smiler sends after them.

We also learn along the way that Gene’s father is also multi-expressional and is the reason Gene is the way he is.

Most of the voice actors do a service-level job. Nothing about them is memorable and they don’t do anything. In the behind-the-scenes footage director Tony Leondis talks about how talented and wonderful his cast is. Especially mentioning Sofia Vergara for what amounts to five lines, and Sir Patrick Stuart who plays poop, and only makes similar jokes. However, T.J. Miller’s performance is very rough and uncomfortable. He feigns emotion badly, and at moments where Gene is laughing, it sounds like a vegetable peeler going down your arm.

T.J. is supposed to be a young adult, but he sounds like a 40-year-old smoker. His awkward-ness is beneficial to his role in the Deadpool films (which I must talk about on a later date) but he cannot express joy. His laughing sounds forced, uncomfortable and rough. The film is filled with these moments of his character expressing himself as it is the point of the film, express yourself. But so many actors would’ve given off a better performance. An obvious shout would be Chris Pratt, as his energetic persona helps him sound more youthful and expressive. However, there is almost certainly an abundance of other talented actors willing to fulfil his role.

The film was heavily criticised for being nothing but a series of product placements, characters visit YouTube, Instagram and Spotify among others. This was similarly done in The Lego Movie but in that film the flow felt more natural and didn’t feel shoved in so they could include it in the trailer.

Another big differing factor between The Emoji Movie and The Lego Movie is the directors. Tony Leondis has only directed one major film, 2008’s Igor, but has also directed two other, smaller, projects. Phil Lord and Chris Miller had directed 21 Jump Street, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and more, firmly planting themselves as talented directors and writers. The rest of the writers for The Emoji Movie aren’t that much better.

The film is filled with inconsistencies and plot holes, it’s impossible to count them all. This is especially evident in the “real world” as Alex acts completely insane and never mutes his phone, instead opting to get it reset at a shop.

Many of the jokes don’t land, and even more aren’t even jokes. Such as when Gene flies by hanging onto a balloon emoji and the two eyes, a nose, two ears and a mouth appear below forming a face. Or when Hi-5 is sent away by security and suggests his place is hard to find, “in the nosebleeds” when the same nose from earlier says “I’m standing right here. Words hurt”

The director and writers for The Emoji Movie had no passion for their project. They wanted money and so they created the laziest movie they could think of. They stuffed it with marketable and cheap A-List stars and Patrick Stuart, and called it a day.

The Emoji Movie is an experience it’s hard to pin down there’s so much pandering and bland-ness in the film it’s hard to really get across. Perhaps you’ll watch the film and find the failed attempts at humour insulting and angering. Perhaps you’ll watch it and find the way they handle internet culture of feminism simplified or insulting?

Personally, I find the way they act like emojis are so important to communication is insulting. Jailbreak mentions that female emojis used to only be princesses or brides. But that’s blatantly untrue. Smiler is a female, Gene’s mother, Mrs D and so many other emojis in the film are females. The film simplifies and creates a strawman for these arguments and acts like it’s greater than all other films because of that.

I must add though that the reception from critics and YouTubers is over-the-top vitriolic. Chris Stuckmann’s review includes a scream, set as his initial reaction to having seen the film and The Emoji Movie definitely doesn’t warrant that kind of response. Most YouTubers seemed to cover the film not because they had anything to add, but simply because it was going to earn them money quickly. I Hate Everything mentioned that people shouldn’t go see it but should learn from his mistake. This comment would appear more genuine if he didn’t go see the film, like Cinemassacre did in 2016 for Ghostbusters. James Rolfe presented his distaste before the film released because he knew he wouldn’t like it, so decided not to see it. These YouTube critics aren’t seeing the film because they think it might be good, they’re doing it for the money. They’re not doing it to teach the audience why it’s bad, they’re doing it for the ad revenue.

In his review, Chris Stuckmann is no worse than the Tony Leondis and the other writers of The Emoji Movie. Clearly arousing hate and critiquing the movie on a level that the film doesn’t deserve to drive more clicks and get more money. It’s not a movie to scream about, it’s a movie to talk about blandly because it arouses no emotion. I’m sure if Stuckmann was to watch the film again he would acknowledge he exaggerated his anger and correct himself.

Chris Stuckmann

I watched the film countless amounts of times in the past week. All in the hope of better understanding what it was about this film that was so awful. And I can honestly say that there is nothing special about the film. The film’s corporate pandering and insulting presentation of characters and groups of people is no worse than in films like Left Behind or God’s Not Dead. But if you were to ask Chris Stuckmann or I Hate Everything which was worse, they’d definitely say The Emoji Movie.

Movie 43 is a racist, sexist, unfunny and insulting assault on the senses, but The Emoji Movie shouldn’t create as much of a reaction. It’s an animated film about people in a phone. It’s bland, forgettable, childish nonsense that deserves to be remembered as a mis-step in the movie industry.

It’s important to remember that this was a big event at the time. The trailer was bombarded with hate and criticism and this continued onto the film’s release. Films like these have shaped our relationship with Hollywood. Since then films have become more corporate and less Human, but through the efforts of people, we could strike a change and force Hollywood to adapt to us. Such as when they had to change Sonic for his movie earlier this year, or Cats last year.

Thanks for reading. This is probably my longest article so far. I’m planning on doing another article like this one in a few weeks, this time for a movie I really like, but goodness knows how that’s going to play out…

If you disagree with any of my points please leave a comment or tweet at me. I promise to respond to all comments (where I have a chance to comment) and reply to as many tweets as I can.