THERE! I FIXED THE MOVIE! - The Emoji Movie

 

I'm gonna be entirely fair and say that The Emoji Movie is in fact not the worst animated movie in existence. I’ve seen way worse in my days, even from Sony Pictures Animation. It's got a couple of neat ideas, a few laughs scattered here and there, and the animation is fine for what it's trying to do. In short, what works about it does elevate it above films like Surfs Up 2 or The Smurfs 2. I’d even argue it’s not the director, Tony Leondis’, worst film, on account of the fact that Igor still exists. Everything else, however, is a pretty good example of how not to write an animated movie. Confused worldbuilding, terrible dialogue and jokes, overly-blatant product placements everywhere you look, baffling morals - it's all a huge mess. But hey - all messes can be cleaned up, so how do we fix this one? Let’s begin.

First, we have the comedy. Like I said, there’s a couple of decent jokes, such as the elderly being presented through emoticons like :P or ;), but the rest of the comedy…yeah, this movie won’t be beating the “written by an algorithm” allegations anytime soon. It’s especially disappointing considering this is a Mike White-penned movie and he’s worked on some great stuff like School of Rock and The White Lotus. But the biggest problem with some of these jokes is that, when they’re not going full “how do you do, fellow kids?”, they’re all too obvious. For example, one scene has a couple of monkey emojis heading off to work. What are they gonna say? “Monkey business”. Because…funny? Another scene features an elephant walking past Gene. What’s his one line? “I remember.” The James Corden hand calls out the fist bump emoji for being a knucklehead. You get the gist here, right? All these jokes are way too on the nose and unsubtle to the point where they aren’t funny. My suggestion is this: what if we twisted these jokes? For example, instead of the monkeys responding to Gene asking what type of business they’re doing with “monkey business” and then just acting like monkeys, they could just say “quite frankly, none of yours” and walk off. That’d be a little funny. I’d even completely reverse that elephant joke so the elephant instead doesn’t remember it. Granted, that’d be a repeat of that scene in Zootopia, but it’s still better than going for the most obvious punchline. As for the rest of the writing…let’s be real, the storytelling is not gonna be winning any awards (well, it did, but they were Razzies. By definition, those puppies don’t count). The story to this movie is by far the most generic plot I’ve seen in an animated film in some time. It’s essentially “kids movie writing 101”. Watch: we see a society of sentient beings inside of something as we focus on the odd one out who just can’t fit in. He alongside his quirky comic relief and his strong love interest set out on a quest to help him become normal but in the end he learns that being himself is what’s important. How many times ya heard that? Honestly, I feel like the movie would’ve worked better if they poked fun at these tropes, going out of their way to acknowledge and satirise how dumb they are. Think Sky High but with comedy similar to Animaniacs. Though my one catch is that they shouldn’t go too overboard, because whenever that happens, we get a Paws of Fury or a Velma. I’d also redo the character of the poop emoji, whose only real joke is just “poop. now laugh.” Maybe I could make him more avant-garde with an elegant vocabulary to fit the performance by Sir Patrick Stewart, which could maybe add to the comedy of this regal dialogue coming from a blob of shit.

Another fix I wanna make is with the extreme abundance of product placements. If you thought the product placement in another film we covered, Scoob!, was bad, y’all ain’t seen nothing yet. The film’s plot specifically relies on its product placements, to the point where it feels less like a movie and more like an 87 ad for Sony phones and apps like Spotify, Candy Crash and…Just Dance. I have no idea how that would work on a phone either. I think it’s just an excuse to try and push a dumbass meme dance. With all the product placements bludgeoning the runtime, it constantly sucks the viewer out of the experience. It’s hard to get invested in the plot when at every turn the movie’s screaming “LOOK HOW AWESOME PEN PINEAPPLE APPLE PEN IS! GO DOWNLOAD JUST DANCE AND DO THE GODDAMN EMOJI POP! ISN’T IT COOL HOW SECURE DROPBOX IS? PLEASE BUY THESE PRODUCTS I BEG OF YOU”. And unlike Ralph Breaks the Internet, which managed to muster a couple of giggles from a few of these moments, none of these scenes are particularly funny. Again, I think it could really play up the satire element of the last fix here, making these parts of the movie a means to more so poke fun at these apps rather than just promote them. For example, one of the biggest question I had about the Just Dance scene was “who the hell plays Just Dance on their phone?”. Why not implement that into some of the dialogue? They could even do what I suggested in the fixing of Ralph Breaks the Internet and change the names of the product placements and just have those in the backdrop for no other reason than “we need at least some original apps in this wallpaper”. For example, just rename Dropbox to…the cloud app. Yeah, every phone comes with a cloud app installed, I don’t know why Dropbox had to be involved.

Before I get into the last fix, I wanna address this line: “y’know, women are always coming up with stuff that men are taking credit for”. That’s a decent enough commentary, but in the context of the movie, it comes right the hell out of nowhere. It’s never brought up again, it doesn’t tie into the message, it doesn’t match the scene, so…what’s the deal? Hell, at the movie’s premiere, TJ Miller said the movie was about women having limitless potential, but the only time they ever do that was with that line and the Spotify scene. I’m not asking the whole movie to be a meticulous dissection of the patriarchy or anything, but addressing it a little would be nice.

Last, we have the ending. This is a movie about an odd one out loser going on a quest to conform to the standards of his world, so whaddya think the message is? “Don’t listen to what others say and be yourself.” Again, how many times have you heard that in a movie? Granted, it’s not a bad lesson for kids, but they don’t do anything new with it. But the real problem comes from the ending. This may be one of the most contrived endings I’ve seen in a movie. To sum it up, Alex sends his phone to the store to be wiped out and the entire phone is about to go bye-bye, but, get this, Gene sends an emoji to the girl Alex is obsessed with (they just say has a crush on her, but…she’s his phone password. dude’s obsessed.) and Alex stops the process of deleting the heroes because he found love. It’s almost like the writers are admitting they don’t know how phones work. The funny thing is, this is surprisingly a really easy fix. Just have Alex do all that while he’s in line at the phone store and then just cancel the appointment on the spot. See? Contrivance avoided. They could even have their little dance party ending as a celebration of “hooray, we didn’t die!”. Plus, I’d get rid of them doing the Emoji Pop…seriously, what the hell was that?

So, I’ll admit that the plot hasn’t changed a ton (I really tried here, guys), so the fixed rendition involves a more satirical tone with the jokes and the characters, touching upon the feminist angle a little, poking fun at and changing the product placement scenes, and redoing the entire ending so Gene does everything that he does while Alex is in the line at the phone store, he cancels the appointment on the spot and they celebrate the fact that they didn’t die. And I think I fixed the movie, I’m not so sure. What do you guys think?

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