Happily cynical.
I think this phrase best describes the Emoji Movie. It's a film that has a kind of cynical slant to the whole proceedings, but is very happy about it. That isn't a good thing: it's cynical not only towards the tropes it makes use of or it's own material, but it's cynical towards its own audience.
The simple fact is, this is a product that was simply designed to push other product. It is little more than an fancy advertisement that pushes Emojis (who, exactly, is buying Emojis?), Dropbox, Candy Crush, Spotify, YouTube, and Just Dance, with a few others sprinkled in throughout.
But before we get into how commercialized this whole thing is, let's talk about the story.
The film opens up with some narration, talking briefly about the history of human communication, ending with the 'most important invention ever', the emojis. Somehow, I doubt that emojis being made is more important than figuring out how to write and keep records, or the phone, or hell, paintings on cave walls...which, you know, without those, emojis might not even exist.
But I digress. We meet our main character, Gene, a 'meh' emoji who is just bursting with feelings and emotions. He just simply can't contain himself from laughing, smiling, crying, the whole emotional range. While on the first day of his job, this causes some incredible disruption as when Alex, the boy who owns the phone Gene lives in, selects him and Gene flubs up making a really messed up face. This causes Smiler, the first emoji ever, to sic robots out to try and delete Gene.
First, I did a bit of research into emojis, as I never really cared about them beyond any other type of emoticon (which are now treated as relics in this movie, despite them essentially being the same thing), and I don't think there is exactly just a 'first' emoji. I could find a batch of THE first emojis, but not just THE one. So not sure about that claim.
More importantly, however, is that Smiler's motives for wanting Gene deleted are...actually fairly sound when you look at the bigger picture. Gene's goof up gets Alex to start questioning if his phone is okay, and while Smiler chasing Gene has Gene do a few other things that make Alex want to reset the phone, she's kind of got a point here. Gene messed up, making Alex think his phone has a glitch, and wants to reset it back to factory settings. What this'll do, is erase everyone and everything within the phone, killing all of them. So Smiler's motives....wanting to remove Gene to protect hundreds, maybe even thousands of others, is not exactly the most evil thing I've ever heard. She does kind of come off as a bit cracked in the head, but I think it was kind of a weak villain.
But then, the entire movie is. There's this whole vibe over the whole thing, that they just try to rip off from other products, and can't even give the 'meh, whatever' reaction to it. It's part TRON, part Wreck-it Ralph, part Inside Out, but lacking any kind of major art style or even memorable characters. They're all incredibly trope-y, and the film does nothing to really break out of those molds.
So the basic set up is: The main character goofs up, gets on the lamb, wants to change themselves to fit in. Along the way, picks up a comedy relief friend, meets mysterious person who can help them, makes agreement. They reach a point where the agreement is to be fulfilled, the comedy friend gets taken, the main character wants to save them, the mysterious other doesn't, but everyone comes to their senses and saves everyone by the end, and they learn it's okay to actually be yourself.
I mean, I watch cartoon movies, I don't exactly expect these things to always break the mold. But this is about as tired as it gets, and doesn't deviate from the formula at all...except to play Candy Crush.
Yeah, strangely the film takes several minutes to play Candy Crush, and Just Dance. Just Dance in particular confuses me, as isn't the point of that game to...play like you're dancing? Is the mobile version like Elite Beat Agents?
As for Candy Crush, I know there's emoji games out there...Disney has one, that's basically an emoji 'match 3' game, so why not go with that have them help out? I think I'm putting in more effort here than the makers of this film did.
The fact that these are advertisements isn't hidden very well; at one point, the group finally gets to Dropbox, and Smiler's robots can't follow them in, having been boosted with illegal upgrades and, according to one character, "they're illegal malware; Dropbox is secure." It's pretty obvious what is going on, and the dialogue doesn't even remotely try to hide it.
Plus, the whole reason for this stupid little adventure is because of the effect it's having on Alex's life; but unlike Inside Out, where it felt like there could be actual consequences for Riley, this feels utterly pointless. I really don't care if Alex wipes out his phone or not, there's nothing of any real value lost. The characters are all bland, one dimensional characters (which of course they are; if your'e an emoji, you are that ONE THING FOREVER), the movie doesn't offer up anything major to look at or aspire to, and even the inclusion of Patrick Stewart amounts to nothing as he has all of maybe 3 minutes of screen time.
So, as I said. the film is 'Happily cynical'. It's happy to be little more than a product pushing ad, that the folks at Sony Animation expected people to just lap up. They don't even value the audience they have for this enough to try to even remotely hide it, and I think that's the worst thing about it. It's certainly not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it sure tried.
