The Emoji Movie: Worst Film Ever?

From the day it was announced, to the release of its teaser trailer, The Emoji Movie was met but nothing but disdain; I haven’t seen such hostility towards a Sony picture since 2016’s Ghostbusters. With a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes on the week of its premiere, now with a current 6% rotten grade, is The Emoji Movie from Sony Animation that bad?

The story follows Gene (T.J. Miller) who like all other emoji’s are to express what they are programmed to be, in his case the feeling of indifference or “meh” as they call it. The only problem is that Gene can express more than one emotion. This puts everyone in the phone world in jeopardy and labeled public enemy number one by Smiley (Maya Rudolph), the ever-happy ruler. Hoping to fix this mess, Gene goes on a quest to be reprogrammed with the help of Hi-5 (James Corden) and Jailbreaker (Anna Farris) traveling from one app to another while avoiding internet trolls, spams, and Smiley’s deleting bots.

A cash grab product that will be dated a few years no doubt but with all that said is this the worst film of the year? I can't bring myself to say that because I didn't it was that bad. I wouldn’t call this the worst from Sony Animation as I didn’t leave the theater in rage or feeling that I wasted my time.

Now that doesn't mean that this film was any good.

I will admit that the premise while creative has a heavy resemblance to other films like Wreck-it-Ralph and Inside Out., However (and prepare the torches and pitchforks for this) I always found those films a bit overrated so the similarities didn’t bother me that much. I dare call this movie a Kid version of Disney’s Tron but with cell phones instead of computers. Now of course when comparing them to Wreck-It-Ralph and Inside Out they both rank as the better movies; they set up the rules and guidelines of how their worlds work, whereas in The Emoji Movie everything seems to be made-up on the spot. The rule of having only one emotion got silly to be taken seriously and wished more would be explored in that area. It results in a convoluted story along with many disposable characters including a poop emoji voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart whose just there serving no purpose to the plot except that he’s a poop emoji. Get it?

Maybe it’s because of James Corden’s charisma but his role as Hi-5 got me laughing more than once; a performance I found more charming than his role in Trolls from Dreamworks.  The voice acting is fairly decent; my favorites, along with Corden being Anna Farris as Jailbreaker who may be no Wildstyle form The Lego Movie but I still liked her character, and Steven Wright as Gene’s father Mel whose deadpan vocals are perfect casting. Call me a sucker for dance games but I was jamming when it came to the Just Dance app, I know its blunt product placement but I’m sorry I couldn’t help but move to the beat. I also like the designs they give these characters especially Gene who reminded me of Pac-Man from the super NES game Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures as well as the movie taking advantage of Hi-5’s hand design leaving to some funny visual gags.  

Like my high school algebra paper the film is 50/50, it gets some things right and some things wrong but at least you can say its not a failing grade. Similar to the titular character, the movie is a meh result. Honestly, you can find worse animated trash than this like Norm of the North, The Wild Life, Shrek the Third and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2. Those are films that really make my blood boil.