Saw 'The Emoji Movie' as a big fan of animation, to see whether the concept (which was one that was hard to decide whether it was intriguing or baffling) would work, as someone who has liked the previous work of a lot of the voice actors (i.e. Patrick Stewart) and whether it was as bad as the tsunami of negative publicity before release and when it came out made it out to be.
After seeing it, there are worse films out there (animated and otherwise) but 'The Emoji Movie' is a mess, if not quite the recipe/incarnate for cancer that has been described. Regarding the target audience from personal experience (this doesn't mean that it will apply to all audiences or everybody's experiences), 'The Emoji Movie' didn't appeal to either children or adults in my cinema screening. Adults were squirming their way throughout the film and while recognising the things that are referenced were groaning and rolling their eyes at how everything was executed. Children looked like a lot of the ideas were going over their heads and seemed more interested in their bags of sweets and popcorn than what was going on on screen. It was a mix of both with me.
The best, or shall we say the least bad, thing about 'The Emoji Movie' is the voice cast. Most of the voice actors gave decent performances (James Corden and Patrick Stewart are the liveliest of the bunch), though a few didn't fit their characters (Maya Rudolph has shown that she can voice act with a lot of bubbly personality but she was just wrong here). They did deserve much better however, and should have known much better, didn't think that Stewart could lose more dignity but he managed it in a embarrassingly misconceived character that he gave much more to than deserved.
Everything else comes off badly or worse. There are worse-looking animated films, but the animation never rises above routine, often looking flat and stiff and there is a complete lack of imagination, the colours never popping out at you as they ought like they do from personal experience with "emojis". The soundtrack is all noise and no subtlety, and tends to be inappropriate.
When it comes to the writing and the story, 'The Emoji Movie' fails. And not just by a little. We are talking hardcore. All the jokes fall flat because of how randomly they tend to be executed and the jokes in quality are juvenile at best and infantile at worst. The script is peppered with dialogue that is overripe and will embarrass even the youngest of cinema goers, when it's not going over their heads. The story, proof that the concept was more of a questionable one than a good one, is not much of one and feels like it was made up as it went along, with the insertion of the likes of Candy Crush, Spotify, Youtube and Facebook being little more than blatant product plugs explored in a mostly throwaway fashion. There are a lot of random and unnecessary scenes and even more so facepalm-worthy moments.
Imagination is zero here, with a mishmash of ideas reminiscent of 'Inside Out', 'Wreck It Ralph' and 'The Lego Movie', all three actually being good films (masterpieces in the case of the first two), but without the fun, creativity or emotional investment which are as non-existent as the imagination. The basic theme is a relatable one when done right, but dealt with indifferently. The characters are both bland and annoying, character development is minimal and what there is is rushed.
Overall, a mess. While it is a little better than made out, there is the agreement that the film is a disaster that is more poop than it is meh, despite being the general consensus it seems that this review is not going to be popular when it comes to useful votes. Despite being a subjective person, the excessive non-useful votes for the negative reviews and the up-voting of the positive ones are a little suspicious to me. 2/10 Bethany Cox
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