THE EMOJI MOVIE Looks Like 💩

Hollywood being utterly bankrupt from a creative standpoint is about as common a truism as you can get when discussing modern cinema. And, while that's undoubtedly true on so many levels, there are times where a movie comes along that proves why mainstream big-budget fare is worth defending (movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, The LEGO Movie and Mad Max: Fury Road fit this mold quite smoothly, if you need a few examples)....
....and then there are movies that are so blisteringly appalling and artistically worthless that I end up smacking my head against a nearby wall, thinking "Why do I even bother?". Guess which category The Emoji Movie falls into.

All hyperbole aside, this "movie" looks like its going to land a nice comfortable spot on countless lists of the worst movies that came out in 2017. Anyway, the basic premise sounds like the diseased, corporate-mandated offspring of Inside Out, Wreck-It Ralph, and a little dash of The Lego Movie for good measure. The jokes are all stiflingly lazy and sound like they were ripped straight out of the "Everything Wrong with Modern Children's Films" playbook. The animation is so cheap, I almost thought this was an extended T-Mobile commercial (it might as well be with all the other product placements that are seen here and the dozens more that are almost certainly going to be in the final cut).

Honestly, this whole thing could easily be renamed "Everything Wrong with Sony's Approach to Modern Movies". It's all there: the shameless product placement, the bafflingly wrong-headed idea fueling it all, the absolute waste of talent (mainly the animators and almost everyone in the cast except James Corden), and the scarcity of anything resembling originality, inspiration, or even effort. Long ago, a film critic I used to admire once said that the fact that someone gave millions of dollars to Baz Luhrmann to make The Great Gatsby in 3D was enough proof that Hollywood doesn't have respect for anything. If only I'd known that this movie was coming, I'd tell him he hasn't seen nothing yet. Plus, the fact that Sony's planning on showing this thing at this year's Cannes Film Festival is the poisoned cherry on top of this cesspool milkshake.

The Emoji Movie comes out later this summer; so, plan accordingly (lock your doors, set the alarms, and hug your family). Something that shouldn't exist finally does and we're all the lesser for it. The doomsday clock is ticking faster and faster while I sit here counting every spiteful second that goes by. Cheers!