The Emoji Movie is Imaginative & Colorful. Can’t Say a Bad Thing about it… (Review)
Mark Miller
This week I went to see my Emoji movie with my mum and she really liked it. I love my mum and have a good time whenever I’m with her so for this review I’m only going to say nice things about this movie. Anyone who wants a searing review where I vent spleen about the state of film today will have to wait, and probably not too long. At the time of this writing Rotten Tomatoes has this at 8%, which is pretty low, which is unfortunate and really undeserved. I will even add an extra star to my rating because I had a good time.
Gene, a multi-expressional emoji, sets out on a journey to become a normal emoji.
I think the thing I like most about the Emoji Movie was the saturation. My goodness the colour was bright, dialled right up to 11. The visual representation of the world of the Emojies the universe of the Phone was really beautiful. I liked the Pirate Bar and the Just Dance. And there was a moment that was actually amazing – the characters stumble into the Instagram App and enter a photo of Paris. The 2D image becomes a 3D scene and they’re able to walk around in this captured image. I highly recommend seeing that moment if you can.
It can’t have been easy to write a movie about Emojis. I couldn’t do it. The fact that they got a movie out of the source material is impressive. It’s a testament to the fact that good writing improves everything. And there was some pretty good writing – the pacing was precise and the each scene efficiently advanced the plot. This movie was funny, way funnier than War for the Planet of the Apes. It wasn’t scary at all, The Emoji Movie is very family friendly.
So much talent went into this movie. The director, Tony Leondis who directed Igor, one of my very favorite films ever. I like TJ Miller, he was great in Christmas Party and Deadpool. James Corden was fantastic as the Hand, he was a charismatic sidekick that was desperately needed. I loved the villain – it was the Smile Emoji and she was terrifying. Since she couldn’t have any expression other than a giant smile, she had many different kinds of smiles, including the Tense Smile, the Gloating Smile, the You’re-Going-To-Get-It-Later smile. I know people who smile like that and it’s legitimately frightening.
So was The Emoji Movie worth watching? You might be expecting me to say this is 2017’s Angry Birds, where they took a gimmick from the emerging technological culture and tried to cash in on that, but you’d be wrong – I’m not going to say that. I will say The Emoji Movie reminds me A LOT of Wreck-it Ralph. Like, just so much. And there were also some similarities to Inside out. I loved both those movies a lot.
