What this movie was is a bad mash up of Wreck It Ralph, Bee Movie, and Inside Out.
- Wreck it Ralph
Gene finds out he’s a glitch in the system of phone apps where everything is as it should be and shall remain. Do what you were created to do and nothing else. Sparkle Penny Pop Pop was a glitch in the game Sugarland and sought the same kind of redemption as someone who is different within a land of conformity.
- Bee Movie
Don’t care who objects: loved this movie.
Gene and his family has long been a ‘meh’ family; however, there is something wrong with Gene. Gene is not ‘meh’ but all the facial emoticons rolled up into one yellow byte; he’s different and he goes on a quest to right the ‘meh’ so that he can live out his life doing what it is he was created to do.
- Inside Out
The trio of emoticons venture into app world just as the duo of memories, Joy and Sadness, trek to that mythical place inside the brain of an adolescent mind where memories are not forgotten.
There is even a scene where Gene and Jailbreak lose the hand in the deleted app bin; a world drenched in a depression of blue where it’s occupants await final deletion.
Remember the Bing Bong Jump Scene? It’s just like that but no one cares if James Corden dies in this movie. I mean, no one cares if the hand dies in-this-movie.
The Salsa Loves Emoji Movie
My wife enjoyed this movie and laughed throughout the entire movie while I sat there sighing heavily and murmuring the f-word over and over again?
That was not funny. And That jokes sucked, ugh!
Val, is an emoticon user and loves to use them regularly in her text messages. During the Candy Crush scene, she was directing the cartoons on what moves to make in effort to free Gene from captivity within the app game. The nuanced jokes appealed to her knowledge of the apps she uses daily.
What I was more impressed with was the conclusive thoughts she had about the films ending. We returned home and while I went to my computers she blurts out this exclamation referring to the message this film, The Emoji Movie, meant to convey to audiences.
But first, allow me to set the staging of the last scene this movie:
Last scene (don’t care if I’m spoiling): A preteen boy saves his phone from a permanent erasure of data, and searches for the one emoticon to send to a young lady he’s sweet on; this emoticon will tell the young lady everything he’s his feeling. He searches and finds Meh, the emoticon with a thousand faces — that’s the new title to this movie.
Based on this scene, my wife believed the message the writer and director of this film wanted to express was about how we should get off our collective asses and learn to talk with one another.
Follow Up Argument
Now, the kid sent the young lady the emoticon that expressed all of his feelings and she was so impressed, she thought ‘hey, I should walk over and talk with this guy.’
She only spoke to the kid, because he sent her an emoticon with a facial twitch problem. Now, let’s say he save his phone and ponders sending the emoticon message before consequently sliding the phone into his pocket, then approaching young lady —using feet and legs— and strikes up a verbal conversation with a gal; that would valid Valerie’s opinion.
However, it didn’t, happen like that.
The story wasn’t about the kid, it was a subplot to further along the adventure of Gene the ‘meh; emoticon. With order resumed in Textopolis Gene is now a huge celebrity and well accepted glitch to the phone user.
If they did make an emoticon movie to completely debunk the reasoning behind the making of this ridiculous film, wouldn’t that be a better conversation? The meh emoticon doesn’t even exist in the real world. That’s right; ask Siri, Alice, Echo to search for the meh emoticon in their phone or on the web and you won’t find it. What you will find is unamused, which how I endured this film.