Let's just get this over with.

Background and BTS:

Emojis are little faces showing various emotions you can text to your friend instead of actual words. Seems like the best idea to make a movie on, right? RIGHT?! Well that was the idea for Sony Animation studio and director Tony Leondis, who also directed the films Igor, Lilo and Stitch 2, and Kronk's New Groove, which were all sub-par animated films. The Emoji Movie stars T.J. Miller, who played Weasel in Deadpool, James Corden, the host of The Late Night Show with James Corden, and Anna Faris, who played Samantha in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, another Sony Animation movie. And also a way better movie. It also stars Maya Rudolf, Steven Wright, Jennifer Coolidge, and Sir Patrick Stewart as the Poop Emoji. Yep. Patrick Stewart, a Shakespearean trained actor, the man behind such dignified roles as Professor X and Captain Picard, plays a literal piece of sh*t. Whatever, let's just do this before I get too angry. Oh wait, it's too late for that.

No, I'm not gonna bother with adding pictures this time. It's the Emoji Movie, what do you care?

Plot Summary:

The Emoji Movie takes place inside of a non-specifically branded cell phone belonging to a kid named Alex, who has a crush on a girl named Addie. Gee. A teenage boy has a crush on a girl. What a totally not overused setup for a movie. It's kinda like Max and Roxanne from the Goofy Movie, but nowhere near as cute. Anyway, the real main character is Gene, a "meh" emoji... wait, why is his name Gene? That has nothing to do with emotions or anything. All the other characters have a name that relates to their emotion or whatever they do. But "Gene" has nothing to do with being "meh". Whatever, Gene has a problem where he can show multiple emotions, while all the other emojis can only show one. He's about to go out onto the phone, which means Alex might use him in a text. His parents don't want him to do it, but he does anyway, and gets selected. He panics and makes the wrong face, making Alex think there's something wrong with his phone. The head emoji, Smiler, decides that he needs to be deleted, and sends her bots after him. They chase him around, until he runs into the high-five Emoji, named High Five (real imaginative), and they escape by heading to the Loser Lounge, where the Emojis who never get used hang out. Five used to be one of the favourite Emojis, but for some reason Alex stopped using him. Anyway, Five tells Gene that if they find a hacker named Wildstyle, I mean Jailbreak, she can reprogram the phone to make Gene a permanent "meh" and make Five a favourite again. They leave the text app and head to the piracy app (again, real imaginative) where they meet the physical representations of spam, an internet troll (the only enjoyable character in the movie), and a trojan. They also meet Jailbreak. When the bots attack and start deleting people, Gene, Five, and Jailbeak escape into Candy Crush, where Gene is mistaken for a yellow candy. The other play the game for like 5 minutes of advertising until they get Gene out. Jailbreak reveals her plan; she's going to get them to the Dropbox app and get to the cloud, where she'll reprogram the phone, and stay in the cloud herself.

Meanwhile, Genes parents, who are also both "meh" Emojis, argue while they look for Gene. They go to the YouTube app, but they're followed by Bots. They distract them by playing the Pen Pineapple Apple Pen song and cat videos, and escape. They end up in the Instagram app, where Gene's dad, Mel, reveals that he has the same malfunction as Gene, but managed to suppress his emotions. The two reconcile, and continue to look for Gene.

The main group travel to the Just Dance app, where they invent some stupid dance right before a bunch of bots come to chase them. Jailbreak also accidentally reveals that she used to be a princess Emoji, but escaped because of some social justice bullcrap. In the real world, Alex sees the phone malfunctioning and deletes the app, sending it, the bots, and Five to the trash where they belong.

Gene and Jailbreak get Five out of the trash after going through Spotify, but get chased by an upgraded bot. They make it to Dropbox, and the bot can't get in because Dropbox has such good virus protection. They encounter a firewall, and they get through it by using Gene's face-changing ability and by using Addie's name as a password. They make it to the cloud, and Gene admits he likes Jailbreak. She rejects him, saying she wants to be independent or some crap. The reprogramming is finished, and Gene is now permanently "meh". He gets captured by the bot, and brought back to Smiler, where she prepared to delete him. Jailbreak and Five follow him by summoning the Twitter bird logo and flying after him. Genes parents come to defend him, and get threatened with deletion as well. Jailbreak hacks the bot, and it falls on Smiler. Unfortunately, Alex has already gone to a phone store to reset his phone, and everything is going to be deleted. In a last-ditch effort, Gene uses his malfunction to create a face-changing emoji, which Alex sends to Addie. After getting attention from the girl he likes, he decides not to delete his phone, saving all the Emojis. With Smiler gone, Gene becomes the most popular Emoji and they all do the stupid dance for like 5 minutes and I lose faith in the film industry and humanity.

Characters:

I hate all the characters in this movie. They're cut and paste from other movies. Gene is the unlikely hero who's different from everyone else. Despite being the only character who can show emotions, he's extremely boring. Jailbreak is litterally just Wildstyle from the Lego Movie. High Five is like a mix of Donkey from Shrek and the Minions from Despicable Me (who I also hate). Gene's parents are litterally just one joke; they're "meh" all the time. Smiler is an okay villain I guess, but even she can get annoying for most of the movie. And of course, Patrick Stewart as Poop. He's barely even in the movie, and yet he was featured on most of the posters as a main character. Also, ALL HIS LINES ARE LITTERALLY JUST POOP JOKES. I will say, though, the human character designs were pretty okay. Alex and Addie looked alright, if not a little plain, and there's a humanoid character in the Just Dance app who I thought was pretty cute. But that's pretty much it.

Good And Bad:

There were a few jokes that kinda worked, and I liked some of the human character's designs. The voice acting and animation was pretty good too. Talented comedians like T.J. Miller, James Corden, and Maya Rudolf lend their voices, and they did an alright job. The people working on this movie tried their best, but their best was not enough to save this movie. That's pretty much all the good.

Okay, where to begin with the bad. First of all, a movie based on Emojis. Why did this movie need to happen again? Answer: it didn't. The movie only exists for advertising purposes. If you haven't noticed already, all the apps in the movie are real apps. Dropbox, Spotify, Candy Crush, Just Dance, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are all real apps that most people already use. Except for Just Dance, I don't know anyone who uses the app version of that game. I'm surprised Wattpad didn't show up so they'd have to get through a sea of One Direction and FNaF fanfictions. The plot has been in hundreds of kids movies before. Shrek, the Lego Movie, Wreck it Ralph, Osmosis Jones, and Inside Out all had similar plots. The only difference, those movies were good. The writing in this film is godawful, and panders to every major demographic companies aim to please. They actually say the words "hashtag truth" and "hashtag blessed". They clearly have no idea how phones actually work, and they even fail at explaining their own world. Why does Gene and the others messing with other apps affect what's going on with the phone itself? If this is the case, why doesn't Alex notice when the Emojis interact inside the text app? Why is the text app the command centre of everything? Why does everything magically come back after it's already been deleted? WHY IS PATRICK STEWART POOP?!?!

Final Verdict:

I can honestly say without hesitation that this is the single worst movie I've ever seen. This is the second movie I've ever seen that was so bad it made me angry. The first was Fantastic 4 2015. Yes. This movie was worse than Fantastic 4 2015. I would rather watch anything than watch the Emoji Movie again. If you told me that if I watched the entire Emoji Movie again from start to finish, you would give me a million dollars, I'd stab myself in the eyes... actually no, that would be worth it. But any other way, I don't even want to look at this film ever again.

Final Grade: F--

Man, that movie sucked. I need to review a good animated movie to cleanse my palette. But which one should I review? Which animated movie is so good that it can completely erase the negative effects of the Emoji Movie?

OH YEAH!!!!