Post by Vits on Nov 1, 2017 12:58:49 GMT
THE EMOJI MOVIE received an unfair backlash when it was announced. People assumed it would be bad without even knowing the premise. Since its release, most reviews I've read/seen reviews that start with ironic words (for example: "Yes, this is a real movie"). I'm not defending it as a good movie; I'm defending it as a bad movie that had potential. Writer/Director Tony Leondis could've made a combination of entertaining adventure and satire of the different reasons why people avoid using words. Instead, he copies the superficial elements of other successful movies, without understanding why they were successes:
-WRECK-IT RALPH wasn't just a movie about a new video game character encountering famous video game characters. It parodied the medium's tropes and tried to connect with us emotionally through nostalgia. Every cameo had a purpose beyond advertisement. This movie's characters are mostly symbols created not that many years ago that are designed to represent 1 thing. Therefore, the main ones aren't well-developed and the minor ones are nothing more than targets for obvious puns. Also, the ways in which apps are used don't really advance the plot or say something about them and/or the people who use them. It's... just cheap product placement.
-THE LEGO MOVIE wasn't just a movie about a man who doesn't fit and a rebellious woman who travel through worlds to escape from an evil businessman and eventually fall in love. It was an epic story with a statement about imagination and creativity. This movie's reason to have the characters travel through worlds feels like an excuse (if the solution to their problems had been in their town Textropolis, I don't think the plot would've been different) and its message (aside from being clichéd) is as complex as cooking pasta... or cooking rice. How would pasta with rice taste like? Also, GENE (the meh emoji) and JAILBREAK (the hacker emoji (that's a thing?))'s romance feels forced and rushed.
-INSIDE OUT wasn't just about a movie about colorful beings interfering with a kid's life. It was a deep coming-of-age story where the beings were literal interpretations of abstract concepts. What I mean is that, even though RILEY ANDERSEN wasn't the protagonist, it was really her story. Here, we barely see ALEX (the owner of the phone where the emojis live in) and, whenever we do, we don't really get to know him. He's a boring person with problems that don't feel like problems.
T.J. Miller, Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge's performances are quite good. The other performances aren't bad. In fact, HI-5 (the hand emoji) could've easily been annoying due to how he was written, but James Corden manages to make him tolerable. Normally, Miller and Corden would've been cast as each other's character, someone like Janeane Garofalo would've been cast as Coolidge's character and Coolidge would've been cast as the villain SMILER (the smiley emoji). I'm glad that Mary Hidalgo thought outside the box (I can't say the same thing about a lot of casting directors in Hollywood). There are a couple of creative ideas in the movie
3/10
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You can read comments of other movies in my blog (in English, in Spanish or in Italian).
-WRECK-IT RALPH wasn't just a movie about a new video game character encountering famous video game characters. It parodied the medium's tropes and tried to connect with us emotionally through nostalgia. Every cameo had a purpose beyond advertisement. This movie's characters are mostly symbols created not that many years ago that are designed to represent 1 thing. Therefore, the main ones aren't well-developed and the minor ones are nothing more than targets for obvious puns. Also, the ways in which apps are used don't really advance the plot or say something about them and/or the people who use them. It's... just cheap product placement.
-THE LEGO MOVIE wasn't just a movie about a man who doesn't fit and a rebellious woman who travel through worlds to escape from an evil businessman and eventually fall in love. It was an epic story with a statement about imagination and creativity. This movie's reason to have the characters travel through worlds feels like an excuse (if the solution to their problems had been in their town Textropolis, I don't think the plot would've been different) and its message (aside from being clichéd) is as complex as cooking pasta... or cooking rice. How would pasta with rice taste like? Also, GENE (the meh emoji) and JAILBREAK (the hacker emoji (that's a thing?))'s romance feels forced and rushed.
-INSIDE OUT wasn't just about a movie about colorful beings interfering with a kid's life. It was a deep coming-of-age story where the beings were literal interpretations of abstract concepts. What I mean is that, even though RILEY ANDERSEN wasn't the protagonist, it was really her story. Here, we barely see ALEX (the owner of the phone where the emojis live in) and, whenever we do, we don't really get to know him. He's a boring person with problems that don't feel like problems.
He doesn't know how to tell his classmate ADDIE that he likes her but, at the end, she's so (unrealistically) straighforward that it feels like he had nothing to worry about.
Other kids laugh at him whenever his phone plays music by accident. Ummm... Why?T.J. Miller, Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge's performances are quite good. The other performances aren't bad. In fact, HI-5 (the hand emoji) could've easily been annoying due to how he was written, but James Corden manages to make him tolerable. Normally, Miller and Corden would've been cast as each other's character, someone like Janeane Garofalo would've been cast as Coolidge's character and Coolidge would've been cast as the villain SMILER (the smiley emoji). I'm glad that Mary Hidalgo thought outside the box (I can't say the same thing about a lot of casting directors in Hollywood). There are a couple of creative ideas in the movie
(especially the way in which JAILBREAK makes fun of female stereotypes and then reveals that she's a princess),
but they're buried underneath gags that are... well... meh. The climax is very lazy. I thought "The heroes will save the day a few seconds before ALEX starts deleting his phone information." Actually, the heroes convince ALEX (indirectly) to stop the deletion a few seconds before its completion. Everything and everyone that was deleted come back as if nothing had happened. I don't think that's how cell phones work.
3/10
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You can read comments of other movies in my blog (in English, in Spanish or in Italian).
