The Emo­ji Movie

Gen­er­al­ly, if I’m watch­ing a movie, and the per­son next to me is twid­dling with their smart­phone, I’d sup­press my inter­nal irri­ta­tion in the hope that the bad vibes might make them com­pre­hend the tac­it social con­tact that one enters into when watch­ing a film at the cin­e­ma. This very sit­u­a­tion occurred about 15 min­utes into a screen­ing of Tony Leondis’ life­force-drain­ing enjoy­ment chasm, The Emo­ji Movie, as a fel­low view­er sat to my left fired out a quick mes­sage to a per­son on the outside. 

This swift­ly devel­oped into a five minute back-and-forth chat. Screen bright­ness was, to my spec­u­la­tive cal­cu­la­tion, full beam, or close to. So unless you were watch­ing this film while wear­ing a pair of those giant OAP side-pro­tec­tion sun­glass­es, this was going to be no small irri­ta­tion. The rea­son you would request for some­one to keep their per­son­al comms under wraps until final cur­tain is as a way to respect the vision of the screen artist. This movie has tak­en time and resource to pro­duce, and what­ev­er we might think of the final prod­uct, it seems like a mod­est ask to dis­con­nect for a 90-or-so min­utes. Then, when it’s all over, you can get back on the Twit­ter and the Face­book and the GeoC­i­ties or whatever. 

For this occa­sion, I sim­ply let it be. From the frac­tion of the film that we’d col­lec­tive­ly endured, I felt that this was a live-and-let-live moment, and that it seemed entire­ly rea­son­able that some­one else would be think­ing about organ­is­ing lit­tle Jimmy’s bad­minton class, mak­ing sure they had some flaked almonds in the cup­board, or pur­chas­ing tick­ets to a motocross event while this film was play­ing. Com­pas­sion won out, even if it clear­ly wasn’t mutu­al. You can impose strict rules upon your­self, but you need to be flex­i­ble with your per­son­al code of ethics and express empa­thy before wail­ing into the ear of a fel­low cit­i­zen. Con­text should super­sede ideology.

Because if a movie like The Emo­ji Movie (or, indeed, the actu­al Emo­ji Movie) is up there on the screen, that should be all the per­mis­sion you need to just remain chill and allow the oth­er har­ried audi­ence mem­bers to get on with their lives/​complete any out­stand­ing per­son­al admin. Look, we’re not endors­ing phone use in cin­e­mas. But on this occa­sion, it seemed only fair, as the film was doing so lit­tle to hold the atten­tion. Even the casu­al movie­go­er must feel shock at this film’s dan­ger­ous­ly louche atti­tude towards orig­i­nal sto­ry­telling, non Christ­mas-Crack­er humour and visu­als which didn’t look like they were pur­loined from the inter­me­di­ary graph­ics on a 1990s Emo­ji-themed pin­ball machine.

There’s an iron­ic ele­ment to the sto­ry. It con­cerns the lov­able ​“meh!” emo­ji, Gene, who is about to take over from his pops (voiced by teen favourite, Steven Wright) as the rota­tion ​“meh!” emo­ji. The prob­lem is, he keeps expe­ri­enc­ing oth­er stock emo­tions, and is thus break­ing out from the sin­gle-serv­ing con­for­mi­ty of the emo­ji uni­verse. Cue a run around on a smart­phone inter­face with apps becom­ing the back­drop for var­i­ous fee­ble action sequences. The iron­ic ele­ment is that while ​“meh!” is unable to keep his oth­er feel­ings at bay, you, while watch­ing this movie, will be total­ly locked into ​“meh!” mode, unable to tap into feel­ings of joy, sad­ness or indif­fer­ent acceptance.

It’s not meant to be art, it’s just for kids, it’s just a bit of fun… all of these excus­es makes sense, but we should expect more from our hard-earned mon­ey. Mem­o­rable moments include an all-time-worst voice per­for­mance from James Cor­don as com­e­dy side­kick Hi‑5, a roman­tic alter­ca­tion in a genius bar and jokes about Face­book and YouTube that will have your nona­ge­nar­i­an grand­par­ents rolling their cataract-rid­dled eyes in dis­be­lief. The one high­light arrives at a moment where our heroes are trapped in a dis­co danc­ing app front­ed by a giant danc­ing span­dex-clad woman who barks out pep­py dance com­mands. As the app is delet­ed, she lets out per­haps one of the most haunt­ing screams ever to fea­ture in a youth-ori­ent­ed ani­mat­ed fea­ture. It is the echo­ing sound of death, con­cen­trat­ed into an instant which will per­me­ate your nightmares.