REVIEW: The Emoji Movie

The Emoji Movie is about as dumb as you think it is. There. I spared you the pain of reading this full review, and hopefully, spared you the hour and a half of this stupid film. This dated, unoriginal, predictable, unfunny, product of the times.  How do you come up with a film like this? Who looks at their phones, texts whoever it is they're texting, brings up these face icons, and suddenly thinks "Hey, I can make a movie on this! A good... relevant... charming movie about text icons..." Well for those of you still reading, I might as well say it,  yes this film is as dated as it sounds. It relies on forgettable humor revolving around smartphone apps and whatever stupid jokes your kid can come up with using emoji on your phone. Along with anything the internet might find amusing. Hey, you like cute cat videos right, we got one of those in the movie! You like Spotify? It's in our movie!  Facebook? Instagram?  Is Just Dance still a thing? We're so relevant.

So what's the premise of this movie? Well... it's actually pretty creative. All your smartphone emoji live inside your smartphone, they have one sole emotion. And that's obviously what they're expressing. Happy face is happy all the time. Meh face is meh all the time. Sad face is sad all the time. Poop is...poop, and everything it says is either a poop joke or poop pun. Say for one Star Trek reference because Patrtick Stewart. You get the point. Here's the problem. This concept is actually... pretty cool. I could totally get behind a good well told story about characters limited to one emotion. I mean heck, the world they make is certainly creative enough and with the right creative thought pattern, a really brilliant movie can be made from this!

Oh wait. It exists.

You've probably heard this movie compared numerous times to Pixar's Inside Out.  And that's because this film can shamelessly rip it off to a t. And that movie, for as simple as it is, is one of the better films of recent years to really take command of such a concept and make something incredible. This film barely even tries. It's a generic outcast story, with a generic sidekick, who goes on a generic coming of age tale, while his generic parents try to find him before generic villain does, and he is involved in a generic romance and it's about as predictable as you'd think. If you've seen Inside Out, you can watch this, point to certain scenes, and say, "yup there's that scene from that good movie". They don't do anything new, or if they do, it's bland and uninteresting. But if Inside Out wasn't enough to rip off, they also manage to take elements from plenty of other films as well, like Wreck-It Ralph, and even things like The Little Mermaid. So where's the actual story come in?

Well... our phone owner is having girl problems, and since this movie thinks no one uses actual words anymore, he relies on emoji to try and express himself. But he uses our main emoji, a malfunctioning meh face and it sends his phone haywire. Chaos ensues. And its up to our hero emoji to try and fix his glitch before phone owner goes and gets his smartphone erased at the store.  Here's the problem. This films message. It's dull. Might as well say "emojis make your world go round, use them more". At the end of the film when boy phone owner and girl phone owner get together, she says she likes how expressive he is... after using emoji. Sorry girl, you're in for disappointment if you think emoji are what you gotta use to express yourself. The guy is still socially awkward and shy. But hey he's got one radical emoji! I guess everything's okay. I wanna say more. I really do. But... I just can't...

Have I mentioned how trendy this film is? I can't remember. Have I? Because it won't have a very long life. I don't care what the target audience is. If you liked this film at all, it won't last. Guarantee you'll forget about this film before too long. This film is a product of the times and nothing more. It won't age well, it won't ever know the word "timeless", and it won't ever be worth more than five dollars in the bargain bin. I can't even recommend it for the young young viewers because frankly, there just wasn't much going on in this film. The theater I was in was eerily quiet in laughter. Because the humor was very dull. Why does Hollywood seem to think that these trend or fad films can succeed?  If the Emoji Movie doesn't serve as one of the many nails in the coffin for these films, I don't know what will.

I'm having a hard time properly describing this film. Maybe because I think this is the first corporate film I've ever really experienced. A film I knew I wouldn't like. And yes, I made the mistake is looking at reviews prior to watching it, but I don't think it would matter. This film just doesn't have any life. I'll be surprised if anyone is on the theater watching it next week. There's nothing worth noting to go back to. Nothing at all. I'm struggling to give this a rating because I just don't have the proper words to describe how dumbfounded I am. Am I losing the ability to critique these films? I don't know. But what I do know is that this movie sucks, and it's getting no mercy from me.

The Emoji Movie is a monument to look up at when it comes to dated pieces of garbage in Hollywood. Similar to films like The Lorax, Sing, or other films desperately trying to stay relevant. These are films doomed to failure. The thing that separates those movie from this however, is that those films had at least some saving graces. The Emoji Movie lacks any of that. Laughter was scarce. The animation isn't impressive. The music is what you expect to hear on your mainstream radio stations. This should very much be Exhibit A on the definition of a dated film. The fact that it had to go to other better films for its life blood is just insulting to its audience, that I can't help it. I'm going to give it the lowest of the low. It deserves it. I don't care if it didn't piss me off as much as other films have. It didn't give me one reason to try and convince me that it could have had any potential at all. Shame on this movie.  It gets one big frowny face.

Am I being too harsh? Will some kids like it? I'm sure they will. Just do me a favor. Show them Inside Out first. They may thank you one day.

Please feel free to request any film you'd like to see me tackle in the near future. Leave a comment down below on your own thoughts to the film. And as always, thanks for reading.

Final Verdict: 0/4

THROWBACK REVIEW: The Mighty Kong (1998)

What on earth did I just watch? I'm not sure it was real, because prior to watching this, I made myself quite the cocktail, and I found myself laughing at this film more than I likely should have. Just listen to this concept and just see if it interests you in the slightest. King Kong, released as an animated musical, starring Jodi Benson, more commonly known as the voice of Ariel in Disney's "The Little Mermaid". I'll be completely honest, I once saw this as a kid, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't remember when that was, maybe it was 1998. I really don't know. All that you need to know, is that watching it roughly two decades later? How I ever found it entertaining, I'll never know. I think a lot of us think that at some point in our lives.

That's not to say Mighty Kong is terrible, but it's certainly not good. There are a few things I actually found I kinda liked, but yeah, on a whole, this one really isn't that great. At only 72 minutes in length, it compresses the story of Kong, and a lot of the exciting parts of that story are merely glanced over, while a bunch of pointless stuff is included. One thing that immediately comes to mind is the dinosaurs. They're barely shown in this. And the fights are not that impressive. I mean...that's practically a Kong staple for me. But on the note of Kong, I ironically found him to be surprisingly absent in this film. Even when he's on screen, he's just not that impressive. This could be the fact that by the time we see him, likely half of the movie is done, and whatnot, but when he's tromping around New York City, there's just not a lot of fun in it. He just kinda looks blank in the face. It sucks the energy right out of the story.

The characters don't exactly help out here. They're pretty terrible. The only two even memorable are Denham and Darrow, voiced by Dudley Moore and of course, Jodi Benson. Jack Driscoll is in the film, but he's not. If you thought there was no way the wooden acting and surprisingly sudden romance between him and Darrow couldn't be anymore wooden and sudden than the original, just wait until you see this. At least in the original, the two spent some time talking and bantering back and forth before they found out they loved each other. Here, Driscoll just kinda constantly insults her, to the point of her becoming infuriated with him, but one song later, they're in love. But they don't even really explore that too much. And honestly, the only reason I remember Denham in this movie is because of his strange accent. He almost talks straight up like William Shatner at times. That and he's almost always smiling in this movie. Oh and there's these two completely pointless characters in the movie in this cabin boy and his pet monkey who contribute nothing in this film at all. They're there to be a supposed comedy relief, but they're not funny, and they're not charming. They're entirely pointless.

I guess I can't talk about a musical without addressing the music, so how is it? Well like the movie, it's not terrible, but it's certainly not good. It's listenable. That's about it. Some of it really doesn't need to be there. Some of it is just forced. One song that I actually kinda dug was a song that didn't need to be there, but was kinda fun just for the sake of being fun. Denham is doing his test camera shots of Darrow, and he's explaining a scene in which she's this island princess. The song has nothing to do with the story, it's just a fun detour from the story. But one thing that caught my eye was the fact that during this little sequence, they show Darrow jumping from a cliff into the sea, and the animation becomes incredibly similar to that of Ariel from Little Mermaid. The way the hair forays in the water, the way she keeps singing in the water, even the facial expressions... all this for a character Jodi Benson voices. There's no way that can be a coincidence. Maybe it's the movies strange way of saying I could be watching Little Mermaid right now. Something I actually really like.

Honestly, again I know I'm being a bit critical here, especially of a kids movie only 72 minutes long, but the movie does have a few strengths. One of them being that it kinda takes notes from both the original, and the 1976 remake. It mainly bases its film off 1933, but it actually directly mirrors a scene from 1976 when Kong takes Darrow to a waterfall to wash her. Unfortunately, the bond between Darrow and Kong isn't really developed, and Darrow is paved more into the frightened damsel category, rather than the tamer of the beast. They also have some fun with the iconic climax, even if it's rather silly at times. Like they have some silly clichés involving Darrow hanging onto the Empire State Building for dear life before she's caught by Driscoll. Another thing I kinda like is that they play with the net idea from 1976 with these huge zeppelins, which make Kong lose balance and fall off the building...and true to the kid friendly status of the film, they have Kong survive his fall. And strangely enough...everyone is kinda cheering when they see he survives. It's very weird.

You know, I know this movie is really dumb and stupid. At times, pretty bad. The animation isn't spectacular, the characters are pretty bland, as is the music and action of the film, it falls in that forgettable territory alongside Son of Kong and King Kong Escapes for me. But at the same time, I can't help but laugh at some of the things they did with this film with how stupid it got. It's balancing perfectly on that so bad that it's good line. Such is something I found completely absent in say...King Kong Lives. So you know what? You're gonna get by a bit easy today movie. I'm feeling generous.

The Mighty Kong gets a one and a half star rating from me. Again, this is by no means good. But there are a lot of fun things about this little direct-to-video release that made me watching this all these years later kinda...relaxed towards I guess. I wasn't joking when I aid it couldn't get worse than King Kong Lives, which I still haven't really forgiven. The limited defense I've heard towards it isn't exactly something I'll debate too much. This film...which was shorter and on a limited budget, much lower than the $10 million budget King Kong Lives had gave me more to enjoy. So if you were morbidly curious, found this at your local goodwill or whatnot? Hey...you might enjoy a single viewing. Make yourself a drink, and just sit back and enjoy how silly stupid this is. Because ironically enough...this may be the best animated portrayal of Kong you'll ever see.

Please feel free to request any film you'd like me to take a look at. Leave a comment down below expressing your own thoughts and feelings about the film, and as always, thanks for reading.

Join me next week when I tackle the first thirteen episodes of....Kong: The Animated Series.  The things I do...

Final Verdict: 1.5/4

REVIEW: Sing

Sing is a predictable, but cute, and fun little production that gave me more charm than I originally expected to be completely honest. That's not to say it's one I'll flock to see again, but from what I thought it would be in the trailers, it was enjoyable enough. Again, even if it is a you know like the back of your hand. It's full of clichés you've seen a thousand times, they lead to plot points you can see coming from miles away, that honestly feel like they're more tacked on than anything. But a likable cast, fun music, and charming jokes that even had me chuckling now and then help you look past a few of these things the duration of the film.

The film focuses on this guy (and I do mean guy, despite the fact that he's a koala bear but more on that later) named Moon, who owns a stage theater, and is facing rough times financially because he just can't seem to draw in the crowds, so he decides to put together a singing contest which he hopes will put him back in the business. However due to a typo, his grand prize draws in hundreds of singers hoping to get their hands on the advertised $100,000 dollars, and you can probably see where this will end up. Everything kinda revolves around this "Liar Revealed" plot that doesn't really have that big a payoff. In fact once it happens, it's almost kinda just glossed over.  It's not a terrible story by any means, but I do feel that they don't really do much with it. In fact, by the end, I'm not sure I'm supposed to care because no one seems to learn anything.

What I mean by that is this film has a whole lot of characters. In fact as they introduce them all in the opening sequence, I couldn't help but wonder if I was in trouble with the sheer amount of characters, all facing common life problems, there were. You got a housewife pig who isn't fully appreciated at home, this street mouse that's a self centered egotistical jerk, this gorilla egos the son of a criminal mastermind who doesn't wanna be in his gang, this shut elephant who lives singing but isn't confident in herself, this porcupine ego isn't fully appreciated by her boyfriend, look it's all been done before, and they do nothing new with it. There is no twist, there is nothing you can't predict, it's all practically given away in the trailers for God's sake. By the time the big payoff happens, and each character's story comes to a close, I couldn't help but feel that there was nothing accomplished. The pig is suddenly appreciated because she sings and dances really good, the mouse is still a self centered, arrogant jackass...and he actually kinda comes out on top (nice message to teach the kids, be a huge jerk, be rude, be dishonest, and you'll still come out on top!), there really isn't a whole lot of closure in this film. The only sense of closure I felt was really there was Meena, as her story actually had a sense of buildup. But as she isn't exactly the focus of the movie, I found it rather underwhelming. Everyone else is just kinda there, and things just happen, because movie. Why does the pig's husband suddenly appreciate his wife more? Does the porcupine's boyfriend realize after seeing his girlfriend's talent how arrogant he'd been with her? Why did the gorilla's father have a sudden change of heart after simply seeing his son performing on a television from prison? These are just a few of the questions left unanswered.

I guess one thing I actually found I really enjoyed was the music of the film. The cast does a very nice job of singing some of the bigger hits of recent years, or even some of the classics from back in the day.  Even if a lot of the music is stuff I don't normally care for. They do a good job singing things from Katy Perry to Frank Sinatra of all things. I also really enjoyed an original song from the film sung by the porcupine character, "Set it All Free", which she writes to help cope with the breakup with her boyfriend. And I will say that the way they animate her as she sings it in the movie is really good. There's a certain emotion to her face that is really convincing.

And I also like the films climax to an extent. In a way it actually reminded me of the ending of a movie I like, entitled "Be Kind, Rewind". The way it's setup, the way it's executed, it gives off a feeling similar to that movie. It doesn't end exactly like that movie by any means, but for what it was, I liked the similarity. Even if the payoff isn't as strong, and is seen from a mile away. Makes me almost wish that it did end similar to that movie.

But one thing I feel the need to say is that I just don't see the reason for this movie's existence. What I mean here is that when I first saw the trailer for it, and the trailers really didn't do a good job of advertising this I might add, I couldn't help but just see a movie that was trying to cash in on a craze started by "Zootopia". I loved Zootopia. It was my favorite film of 2016. But one of the reasons I loved it so much was because in this world of anthropomorphic animals that they created, they made the world feel alive. They had fun creating their characters, making them so similar in behavior and traits to their actual animal counterparts here in reality, that it raised my bar for what I expect in these movies that feature anthropomorphic animals. Sing just didn't do that for me. It didn't even come close to those expectations. They didn't have much of a reason to be anthropomorphic. The only time I can remember in which they actually kinda acknowledge they're  animals, is in a few...bad puns. Like when Mike is singing "My Way" by Frank Sinatra, he replaces the word "man" with "mouse". The only real smart thing they did with any of these characters is that when the porcupine for excited or emotional, she could accidentally start shooting her quills out in random directions. That's it. They don't have fun with this concept. Unlike Zootopia, you could have easily taken all these characters out, and replaced them with humans, and you'd have the same story practically.

I'm giving Sing a two and a half star rating out of four. While it's not exactly terrible, and while I did have fun, some of my suspicions on this film were clarified upon watching it. I'm happy it gave me the fun it did, I'm happy I laughed when I laughed, even if a lot of the humor fell flat for me, and I'm happy I saw it. To be honest, it's probably more a film for the youngsters than it is for me, and I'm sure they will have plenty to enjoy in this film. But aside from some nice music numbers, and colorful animation, I would not exactly say this is one for the adults to look in too much on.

Please feel free to suggest any movie or film you'd like me to have a look at. Leave a comment down below expressing your own thoughts and opinions on the film, as they are most appreciated, and as always, thanks for reading.

Final Verdict: 2.5/4

REVIEW: Finding Dory

So I didn't get to see this in theaters, but I've finally seen it regardless. The sequel that no one asked for is here, and I will say I'm maybe slightly underwhelmed by it. Finding Nemo remains one of my absolute favorite Pixar films, and I knew right off the bat that this sequel would not have an easy time topping its predecessor. Why? Because honestly, I couldn't see much of a story happening in it. Finding Nemo gave us a definitive beginning, middle, and end. All solid. Here, I'm sorry to say that despite the fun story they present, there is a bit that feels like they took some steps backward in their storytelling, because there are a lot of plot points and whatnot that mirror the first film. Particularly towards the beginning.

What I mean to say there is that there are characters that behave way too similarly to how they behave in the first film. Particularly Marlin, who at the end of the first film learns to be a bit more lenient and not so overprotective. Yet here, he is almost just as paranoid, if not straight up insulting towards those he cares about. The reason I guess I don't mind this so much, mainly because in this movie, Marlin and Nemo don't really have much of a role in this film. They're honestly just kinda there. In fact, while it's on my mind, the vocal performances here really don't sound that enthusiastic to me. There's no driving sense. At times, they all can sound very uninterested in their roles.  While there can be some important plot involving Marlin and Nemo towards the beginning, they don't really contribute to this story. In fact, towards the end, Marlin and Nemo kinda have this deus ex machina moment that comes nearly out of nowhere. And that's not the only moment this can happen. The plot at times can be incredibly convenient in the spur of the moment from fish jumping into tanks of water perfectly lined up with one another, or other crazy occurrences that honestly could have been executed better. One of those being the echolocation of the beluga whale. I can't claim to be an expert, but I do know that echolocation doesn't work as well outside water as it does in water. Yet here, it doesn't really have much of a limitation. 

Which brings me to my next criticism. The sea life. A lot of the time, I really don't like how certain creatures behave or whatnot. One thing that comes to mind is that there's very little hostility. The only creature in this film that shows any interest in eating our main characters is this squid which only had one short scene in the very beginning. While I understand that this film isn't nearly as hostile a journey as the first film, there are times I feel that the opportunistic predator behavior is dropped completely, despite being completely hinted at. Like with the sea lions. Marlin talks about how they're known to be predatory animals, yet throughout the film, they have absolutely no signs of such behavior. It's little things like this that make me feel very underwhelmed with a lot of these characters. Even the octopus, which feels more like an excuse to potentially bait another sequel to this series, I didn't find that interesting. He says he wants to avoid the ocean because...reasons. Let me make a quick comparison to Gill from the first film. Despite knowing not as much about him, we were given glimpses into his past to connect with him better than we could this octopus. Hank just isn't as developed as the minor characters of the first film were. Heck, despite being fun, all the minor characters here could have had better development.

My final really big criticism to this movie comes from the fact that the environment of this movie isn't as immersive or played with as in the first film. What I love about Finding Nemo is how they set up the ocean and how life under the sea works. Little things that film does, from fish not knowing how to read, to taking a breath of water before exposing themselves to the air really make this world feel alive. Even in the aquarium of that film. But almost all these things they did in that film are dropped here. Reading seems to be a simple to most fish (even Dory struggled slightly in the first film), we see the fish expose themselves to the air quite often, and they even know how to use certain human objects. Granted that the octopus in real life is indeed a very intelligent animal, very capable of flipping a switch, or whatnot, but it being strong enough to push a stroller, or...minor spoiler alert...drive a truck, seem rather far fetched. Heck, there are times the octopus is exposed to the air for large amounts of time and it doesn't suffer at all.

However, despite all this, despite this film taking so many identical plot moves the first film did to get to its story, despite all these annoyances, once the ball is rolling, there is plenty of fun to behold. Despite being so very over the top in so many ways, I found it impossible not to laugh. Despite the weaknesses of the minor characters, there is plenty of times I laughed at Destiny's near-sighted weaknesses. I had a good laugh at Dory's carefree memory loss moments. I had a fun laugh at the sea lions constantly yelling "OFF!" at that one sea lion trying to get on their rock. The film does have some life in its blood, despite getting a lot of things off or wrong. Though I'd have loved to hear Dory mess up Nemo's name more, it's impossible to say that her journey to find her family is not well executed, if not straight up emotionally touching at times.

I'm giving Finding Dory a three star rating out of four. It does fall short of Finding Nemo. By a long shot. But I kinda saw it coming honestly. It's not a sequel that could have easily topped that film, especially since that film did so much right when it did. With that said, I do hope that we don't see another film in this series. There's just not much else to tell with these characters. The same life blood that gave the first film so much to go off of is no longer there. Sorry Dory. Is it fun? Sure. But it just doesn't compare.

Please feel free to suggest a film you'd like to see reviewed. Leave a comment down below expressing your own thoughts on the film down below, and as always, thanks for reading.

Final Verdict: 3/4