There is perhaps no single emoji to reflect just how savagely film critics are trashing The Emoji Movie. A succession of skulls and dumpster fires would only hint at the intensity of the verbal carpet-bombing.
Reviews began strafing the movie Thursday like drone strikes, one day ahead of the Sony flick’s big debut. And by early Friday, the only metric worse than the average reviewer score of “9” (on a 100-point scale) on Metacritic.com was the dead-flat “zero” rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Emoji is being panned so badly that the cheeky review headlines might offer more punch lines than the movie. Amid all that snarky display type, Screen Crush is the early leader out of the gate with: “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Poop Emoji.”
The Wrap’s headline says of Emoji’s depths of dreckness: “There Are No Words.” Yet Screen Crush’s Matt Singer counters that claim by unleashing a volley of scathing words:
“It would be fitting if there were no words to describe The Emoji Movie; if the ephemeral experience of consuming this unique entertainment could only be summarized in a couple of small pictures dashed off in a text message. But, no, there are plenty of words that can describe The Emoji Movie. Here are a few of them: Unfunny. Saccharine. Nonsensical. Painful. And, of course, crappy. (If you prefer the poop emoji, that works too.)“
The verdict from The Wrap’s Alonso Duralde can be boiled down to one description: “soul-crushing disaster” (if only that blurb would make the film’s national ad spots). But Duralde wants to be clear about his critical forensics:
“The Emoji Movie is not a soul-crushing disaster simply because its dramatis personae are the range of emotive faces and symbols that live inside your cell phone. It is a soul-crushing disaster because it lacks humor, wit, ideas, visual style, compelling performances, a point of view or any other distinguishing characteristic that would make it anything but a complete waste of your time, not to mention that of the diligent animators who brought this catastrophe into being.”