I'm glad The Emoji Movie actually exists. Because the reviews of such a bad film are a comedy goldmine. What makes it worthwhile is that it's not actually "meh". That would be the true crime here. It's actually awesome because it's just apparently so bad that people's children are wailing in their cinema seats to be released from the hellscape torment that is that movie.
It's currently at a 2.1 / 10.0 on IMDB, which is actually an effort for a major studio release to be rated that low. That's literally in the imdb bottom 100 at #30. So it's the 30th worst movie of any type made in the entirety of history. This is not "meh" at all, seeing such a terrible movie is a life-changing experience. Kids aren't going to remember the average movies, they're going to remember having been forced to sit through The Emoji Movie for the rest of their lives.
Personally, I love how spectacularly stupid the movie is on every front. Some of my favorite highlights:
- The film involves the protagonists get into wacky hijinx while going through a number of apps to reach DropBox (where they can find the "source code",) yet they are shown going around the apps in several scenes, calling into question why they even went through any of them in the first place.
- There's a scene where the characters go to the "loser lounge", where emojis nobody uses go. The contents include the eggplant emoji and a fish cake emoji highly popular in Japan.
- The climax hinges on a guy taking his phone to a phone store to perform a factory reset, despite that being a built-in function of most phones. He somehow stops the factory reset of his phone partway in.
- In the obligatory "shady bar" scene, Internet trolls are depicted as computer programs
- The film includes the lines "Words aren't cool" and "Dude, send her an emoji!"
If you haven't seen it, there's a
hilarious review by Jacksfilms, who mockingly hyped up the movie and made an hour-long frame by frame analysis of the movie's trailer.