Be Reel Blog - The Emoji Movie

The Emoji Movie, directed by Tony Leondis, was released in 2017. As part of our podcast project, my group and I decided to watch the worst movies of all time. This movie was the first on our list. Although it wasn't the WORST movie of all time, it was pretty damn bad. The movie had every single cliche in the book, to the point where it was incredibly predictable.

Subjectively, I would describe this movie as "cute." I had the typical love story along with the typical "the princess wants to get away" plot. Overall, it wasn't a bad plot. Although it was predictable, it wasn't bad. However, there were a lot of subplots that were introduced and then abandoned. For example, the bar scene with all of the viruses and spam. It was completely random, even though the hacker was placed there. After the hacker was found and it was destroyed, it was never talked about or mentioned again. The pont? No idea. There was also the Just Dance scene. The writers decided to throw in this random scene to make the main characters, Gene and Jailbreak, fall in love. It creates another subplot of saving Hi-Five and introducing more characters that immediately die. I feel like the actual lesson behind the movie was great. However, again, it was typical. It was the "different is okay and everyone is equal" lesson that has been thrown into kids movies a million times. This movie just wasn't original in any way, and that made it frustrating to watch.

Objectively, this movie wasn't badly made. The animation was really well done. The idea in and of itself also wasn't bad! It was just a matter of the actual execution of the idea. That being said, the execution could have been 1,000 times better. I wish they could have made it less predictable and more original. I also wish that they would have explained their subplots more instead of abandoning them. There were so many things left unexplained, which sort of made it hard to follow. But the fact that it was hard to follow was made up for in the predictability of the plot. By knowing what was going to happen in advance, the audience can follow. And no, that's not necessarily a good thing.

Overall, I'm going to give this movie a bad bad. Although the plot wasn't terrible, the lesson was there, and the idea was ALSO there, I can't bring myself to say that this movie is good in any way. If the idea was executed well, then maybe I would be able to. If you choose to watch this movie, you'll see what I mean when I call this movie "cute." You'll probably spend the whole time predicting the plot and making fun of how ideas were introduced and then immediately abandoned. However, if you like these types of movies, here's a list of movies that are similar:

• Inside Out (I love this movie)
• Zootopia
• Big Hero 6
• The Boss Baby

Enjoy!