Until a positive review came in today and ruined everything, The Emoji Movie had a 0% rating on rottentomatoes.com. It doesn’t even appear to be horrible in a Snakes on a Plane or Mystery Science Theater 3000 way, just perhaps the most dull, middle of the road pablum you could expect from a children’s movie based on emoji.
So what did critics have to say? Let’s start with Eric D. Snider, one of my personal favorite film critics and a big influence on me personally:
To summarize: it’s an unworkable premise that never should have been a movie, that nobody thought would actually become a movie, and that, having become one anyway, puts forth no effort to be a good one and is as bad as everyone thought it would be. We need to make movies great again.
(NOTE: I didn’t use any emojis in this review because I am an adult.)
The man has a way with words. What did Jordan Hoffman of the New York Daily News think?
The only thing worse than the dialogue is the absurd product placement. In addition to “riding the Spotify streams” to make it all the way across the phones, there are a few glimpses hawking Crackle, a streaming service no one uses but just so happens to be owned by the same corporate entity that is distributing the film.
Over at the Onion AV Club, Vadim Rizov had this to say:
Leondis has cited Toy Story as an inspiration, but The Emoji Movie is more like a severely debased Inside Out that takes place inside of a smartphone. The “plot” is really an excuse to hop from one app to another; there are stops in the lands of Candy Crush, WeChat, Just Dance, Instagram, Spotify, and (for the kids!) Dropbox. That last one proves crucial, saving the fugitive trio from a pursuing robot. “Don’t worry, it can’t get in,” Jailbreak helpfully notes. “It’s illegal malware and this app is secure.” At the climax, a Twitter bird comes to the rescue.
Hey, apps! I use apps! I know some of those names, so I’m sure this movie must be great! Maybe I should download some of the apps the movie mentions that I don’t already use! So as I mentioned up top, what feels like a million years ago, someone gave this movie a good review. That someone is Betsy Bozdech of Common Sense Media, who says:
But most audience members old enough to actually own phones will probably realize that much of The Emoji Movie’s plot is predictable (it feels like a mashup of Inside Out and Wreck-It Ralph, with a dash of The Wizard of Oz) and its humor only so-so. Don’t be alarmed if your mind wanders and you start asking yourself questions like: “How many kids have even heard of Dropbox?” and “Why do Gene and his parents get ‘people’ names, while Smiler and Hi-5 just have emoji names?” and “Would a real teenager really call someone to make a tech appointment at the phone store?” If you need something else to think about, try to figure out how you’d describe the movie’s plot using just emojis. Just don’t pull out your phone in the theater!
That… doesn’t sound like a good review. Common Sense Media isn’t so much about telling you if a movie is good or bad, just about letting parents know if a movie is kid-friendly or not. So the one good review this movie got was essentially just telling parents there’s no eggplant emoji jokes.
How did they get Sir Patrick Stewart to be in this? I saw him on Late Night with Seth Meyers promoting it and basically all he did was talk about Logan, an actual good movie he was in earlier this year. I can only imagine Sony gave him and everyone else involved in this movie that has actual talent a huge dump truck full of some of the money they got from all the product placement.