Toy Story was visionary,
Inside Out was a true original,
and Wreck-it Ralph was still pretty good.
But now, the "secret world under our own" premise
ends up like Taco Bell through a human centipede in:
Experience a film that only comes around when a studio exec has custody of the kids for a weekend,
where the underlying IP is the top priority,
while story, plot, character, humor, and tone come tied for dead last
in a film that may not be the worst one ever made,
but it is the worst example of Hollywood farting out 80 minutes of cynical branded advertising
and pretending it's a movie.
Too honest?
Here's a poop joke!
"You might be making too much stink out of all of this."
You know emojis?
Those little pictures morons use instead of words?
Did you ever wonder if they were alive?
No?
How about what their day job is like?
No?
Their love life?
Never?
Well, too bad,
because you're going inside the bland animated world of your phone, whether you like it or not,
full of three-dimensional representations
of two-dimensional text icons
with one-dimension to their personalities
and zero depth to any of this.
"AAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"Gene."
"Are you finished?"
Meet Gene,
the meh emoji,
voiced by humanity's own meh, T.J. Miller.
He needs to believe in himself,
get the girl,
save the world,
and probably some other generic protagonist goals you'll miss while you nap through the second act.
Watch him and the Carpool Karaoke guy travel from app to app
to show off all the cross promotions Sony was able to sell.
But 'cause Internet culture moves faster than it takes to animate a movie,
all the apps are outdated,
"Welcome to Just Dance!"
"Candy Crush."
all the slang is embarrassing,
"#blessed."
"NBD, dude."
"Flay!"
"Ooh, shade."
and all the emojis have about 6 months of relevance left
until they're replaced by Apple's horrifying human/emoji hybrids.
"We got a chicken.
Bokbokbokbokbokbokbokbokbok!"
Eugh.
OK, think of the laziest joke you can think of.
"In the nosebleeds."
"Uh, I'm standing right here."
No, even lazier.
"What kind of business?"
"Monkey business."
Now dumb it down to the point where it barely makes sense anymore.
"Is that the time?"
"Hey, my eyes are up here, pal!"
Congratulations! Now you're writing The Emoji Movie!
Suffer through a parade of dumb kids' humor bordering on anti-comedy,
where the meh joke is run into the ground so hard,
you can't tell what happiness is anymore.
"I'm just beaming with pride."
"I'm so nervous, I could almost shrug."
Stop.
"Don't overreact."
"Uh-oh."
"I told you not to overreact."
Please stop.
"Right now, I'm so overwhelmed with passionate feelings for you."
I get it!
"This is jazzy."
AAAAAH!
But nowhere does this comedy come closer to tragedy than Sir Patrick Stewart playing...
a turd.
"Oh, sh-"
Prove that you can give a man talent, awards, and a knighthood,
but it's nothing compared to the power of a paycheck.
"You're so soft, Poop."
"Not too soft, I hope."
So experience the perfect film for our times
that doesn't teach you the positive role of sadness like Inside Out
or turn a cash grab into something insightful like The Lego Movie,
but instead teaches children that life is a meaningless, mediocre, joyless slog
that takes place mostly on your phone
and only exists to serve a global conglomerate's interest.
Uh-oh, too honest again.
Poop joke!
"Just doing my duty."
"Hahaha!"
"What? What did I say?"
A lot of good people probably had to work really hard on this movie for a really long time,
so I'm sorry.
Not for anything I said about the film,
just, you know, those lost years of your life.