1 /10

If I was God, and I heard this product was not only being made, not only being promoted, but actually released, then I would invite Satan over to manage the heavens so I could personally eradicate my failure below. This is the sort of product - because this is not truly a movie, as the word "movie" is too suggestive of art - that corporations fawn over. And they did. Believe it or not, three major production studios *fought* to make this happen.



Of course, they wouldn't spend too much: Minions, a product almost as artless as this one, cost $74 million and runs for 91 minutes. In comparison, The Emoji Movie cost $50 mil and runs for 86 minutes. A 91-minute-long Emoji Movie would cost a mere $52.91 million; Sony cares less than the company that brought us screaming yellow screen- fever. They threw as little as they could at it.



But that's just the math. In order to fully appreciate how apocalyptic this wretched insult to all things sincere is, consider the following; You, the assumed person seeking entertainment, go to the movie theater expecting to take a break or have fun. And while the blatant advertising (Dropbox is an important plot point, there's a pointless scene with Just Dance, apps all around etc.) and banality may be entertainingly laughable, the very same slithery gargoyles that gave you this product get the money. They count their cash, and they think "Hey, that worked."



So they give you more of the same thing. And more of it. And more, until the idiocy is familiar and the ads the norm. It's already happened to music, with the same notes and lyrics repeated over and over again. Here we have the same situation staring us down, except instead of ass and cash the contents are something else they're trying to sell you.



The Emoji Movie is an ad that you pay to see. Of course product placement already exists in film. The Lego Movie and Toy Story both feature products as characters, but those films had heart and personality. Here, there is nothing but product placement. Anything resembling humanity is just padding for the next app to appear. How vile for a product that constantly tells you to "express yourself."



Do not watch this thing. Don't bring your kids to see it. Don't watch it ironically. Whatever your beliefs, biases, intentions, anything, do not give companies the thumbs up to feed us mediocre, heartless drivel.