Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls! Prepare to be shocked, disgusted, and utterly stupefied. Why might you ask? Well. Let me tell you. Just sit down (please note: if you are already sitting, please stand so you may sit down for dramatic effect) and let me take you on an adventure. You see. My friend and movie-riff buddy Andrew “Weibo” Roche came back into town and together…together we did something incredibly stupid. Family. Friends. Internet. I have seen the end of the universe. It exists here on earth. While comedian Lewis Black would have you believe it’s in Houston, Texas, he is wrong. The end of the universe is actually not a singular point. Rather, it is an object. Something that can be anywhere and at any point in time and space. Gents and Ladies, the end of the universe…is…..The Emoji Movie.

I know. I know. I was shocked too.

Now. Normally, my reviews follow a fairly orderly pattern. I see a movie, think about for a bit, and then type my thoughts down in an simple fashion that ends in a numerical score somewhere between 1 and 10. However. This is not a normal time, is it? For this movie, I simply cannot do a normal review. It would not do this movie the injustice that it did to me and my “friend.” (Please note, I say friend in the largest quotations possible since he is no longer my friend after making me see this awful movie) Instead, I will take you through my weekend, which oddly enough will include a review for the almost equally bad movie, The Dark Tower. Now. If you’re impatient, you will find the numerical scores for these two movies at the bottom of the page, but if you stick with me for the next thousand words or so, I promise you, you will be able to take pleasure out of my misery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’re still here? Great. Shall we backtrack to the beginning?

My friend Roche comes back into town and what do we do? Well naturally the thing to do is round up the troops…the troops in this case meaning our other friend, Kameron. We meet for a quick bite at the 5 star establishment known as Chili’s, and big boy Roche decides we must see either The Dark Tower, which we thought would be a bad movie, or The Emoji Movie, which we knew would be an atrocious movie. So what did we do? We picked the best of two evils of course. It was like choosing between Alabama and Clemson in last years CFP Championship Game…by the way Geaux Tigers in that situation…see what I did there. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah. We saw the Dark Tower (if that wasn’t obvious enough).

Now as I said, going into this movie, we thought it was going to be bad just not that bad. I mean, come on. It’s based off a Stephen King novel, has Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey as main actors, and it even had Jackie Earle Haley in it (he played Rorschach in the Watchmen movie). With all that, how could it possibly be bad?

Well, boy howdy doody were we wrong. This movie is pitiful. It’s like they read the Dark Tower novel, picked out 7 chapters from it, and made the movie out of those 7 chapters and not one page more. It is extremely disconnected and there is next to no character development. In fact, some character’s motivations change within 30 seconds of the same scene.

Moreover, the movie strolls from scene to scene with little to no connections between them. Remember the second Matrix movie (speaking of bad movies) and the hallway with all the doors that lead to different places in the matrix? Where you can walk from the Arctic to the Mississippi by passing through two doors? Well that is like this movie. One minute, the Gunslinger is in complete emo/loner mode and the next minute, he’s all about helping the kid (who’s name I cannot remember) save the world. It’s beyond absurd. A quick note. This movie is only 90 minutes, and while a common complaint I have in movies today is that they generally run too long, this movie could have used an extra 30 minutes of run time….that is assuming the extra time would have been used to literally glue the scenes together.

Pathetic really is the word of the day here. The whole movie tries to build to this “epic” shootout that tries to be something from John Wick but in reality is closer to a B-List ABC show. If it wasn’t for Matthew McConaughey, I would give this movie an absolute 1 and feel no shame about it. His ham-ness saves the day part of the time and when it’s elaborate and stupid, at least it’s funny.

Maybe I’m going on too much about this. You know what. I think I can describe the movie pretty accurately using just three quotes.

“If you’re a fan of the books, I am sorry for your loss.” -Kameron ‘Jimbo’ Sipowski
“Who on earth clapped for that pile of garbage.” -Will ‘I Don’t Get Paid For This’ Selfridge
“Boy was that a sweaty movie.” -Andrew ‘Pol’ Roche

Now those are some quotes you can put on the DVD cover.

Now that would’ve been it. That would’ve been enough. That could’ve been the review. Geeze. It could’ve been my bad movie for the month. Maybe even the….scratch that. The last Resident Evil movie came out this year. That’s my bad movie for the year. But my friend couldn’t leave well enough alone. He just had to keep going. He had to keep pushing. What happened you might ask? (If you honestly need to ask that question, then you really haven’t been paying attention.) Roche and I get together the next day and he insists that the two of us, minus Kam, go see the Emoji Movie.

Now stay with me. We all know the Emoji Movie is bad. You don’t need me, my stupid movie opinions, and my pointless reviews to know that. It is a movie about emojis. Hell. It’s sitting at a 6% percent on Rotten Tomatoes as of writing (compared to Dunkirk which is sitting at a 93%).

However. I’m here to tell you that this movie is all that bad and so much more. How might you ask? Let me share with you a few more quotes for your enjoyment.

‘The Emoji Movie shows the true peril of a communist society and why communism would never work.” -Will ‘I Regret This’ Selfridge
“Throw some sauce on that dance burrito.” -Some poor sap that will have The Emoji Movie on his resume for the rest of his sad life

The level this movie is on is just staggering. The ‘plot’ of this movie is about the Meh emoji and his coming to form. He is quickly thrown into the gauntlet…or phone…or something and has to perform his role as meh for some dumb teenager’s texting life. As it turns out, all the emojis live in a society where they play their one role and nothing else. Yes kids, I wasn’t joking. In this movie, emojis live in a communist society. And guess what, everything goes haywire just like communist societies always do. Don’t believe me. Four words. USSR. North Korea. Venezuela.

Actually, to be frank, the movie isn’t that bad if so long as you pretend the entire film is just an metaphor for the USSR, with the evil Smiley bitchy emoji, who leads the offense against the meh emoji, as Stalin and the Meh emoji, who brings down the Smiley emoji, as Gorbachev. That may sound ridiculous and over the top but it’s nowhere near as ridiculous as talking emojis running through Candy Crush and other apps.

And that leads me to my other yuge qualm with this movie; this movie has the balls to have the most offensive product placement that I’ve ever seen in my 24 years of existence (I see you Candy Crush) as well as some SJW-style level of preaching that I could only find on an Antifa’s Tumblr account. I know that sounds like a strange thing to say. It’s a children’s movie. Why would a children’s movie (ABOUT EMOJIS!!!) get political in any way shape of form. But, unfortunately, it is. Lead voice actor TJ Miller thought this movie could be used to protest President Trump. I know..it is just as absurd as it sounds but I just find it too funny to not include. Now maybe the preaching isn’t that noticeable but when a cartoon movie is preaching at you while another character is running around high on sugar, you know something is off.

I guess my biggest legitimate problem with this film is that it is so formulaic that it hurts. Children’s movies can be unique and tell a story that can effect adults just as well as children. Pixar is the prime example of this. Sure, Finding Dory is without a doubt made for kids, but it can still speak to adults. It’s still art. This movie is just pictures that are there to keep a 7 year old occupied for 90 minutes during the summer. To put it simply. It’s a joke…and not even a good one at that.

Let me tie the Dark Tower back into this discussion. Roche put the two movies we saw as so:

“One was a movie that didn’t know what it wanted to be and the other knew exactly what it wanted to be and accomplished it exceedingly too well.”
-Andrew ‘The Texas Cockroach’ Roche

Roche is definitely right. The Dark Tower certainly does not know what kind of movie it wants to be. A drama? An action movie? A mystery? A sci-fy movie? A teen drama? Who knows because it was just a pile of awful. Beginning to end. Top to bottom. Our Earth to some boring alternate reality Earth.

The Emoji Movie on the other hand does set out to be an over the top ridiculous mess of a flick and it certainly succeeded. I’ll freely admit I laughed at a few jokes here and there. And despite the product placement that made me pine for Resident Evil, the film’s use of Spotify was actually pretty creative. That being said, is it still an awful movie? Without a flipping doubt. It doesn’t serve any purpose (save for occupying bored children) and hopefully will be long forgotten in two months. Should you watch it. Well. I’ll say this. You should not watch it sober (assuming you are of age kiddies). Maybe if you’re piss drunk surrounded by your best riffing buddies, this movie might be worth the price of admission. But sober and alone. Not a chance. It’s not worth your money. It’s not worth your time. It’s not worth the space in your memory. You’d be better off watching paint dry. Learn from our mistakes everyone. Run away from both of these pitiful films.

Scores!

The Dark Tower:
Story: 1
Acting: 3
Presentation: 2
Effect: 1
Other: 2
Final Score: 1.8

The Emoji Movie:
Final Score: 1

I mean come on. Did you really expect anything else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh. And if you can’t do that math to figure out the individual scores, please see me after class.

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