2017 has been an… interesting year so far. In the real
world, a series of natural disasters and what appears to be a
Twitter-influenced update on the Cold War going on between the U.S. and North
Korea has put a lot of worry in people that we are on the brink of destruction.
Oh, and some other stuff concerning sexuality just to make everyone seem even
more petty than they already are. In situations like this, I and quite a few
others would turn to popular entertainment to get away from it all: Movies, TV
(or rather Netflix nowadays), video games, literature; whatever gets the mind
off things for a little while.
Well, in terms of movies at least, that isn’t
working all that well either. Over the past couple of months, a series of
underperforming releases have resulted in some of the lowest U.S. box office
returns on record. If it wasn't for It breaking audience records at the same time, the industry could be in legitimate trouble at this stage. As much as people are quick to jump on whatever hate
bandwagon that could even remotely explain this, with everyone from the
filmmakers to the critics to the general audiences getting thrown into the
crossfire, I’d like to think that there is a far simpler explanation for all
this.
That explanation, as you may have already guessed, is the subject of
today’s review: A film that has gotten legendarily awful reviews, the kind that
can secure a release into the annals of all-time bad filmmaking. And I can
hardly friggin’ blame them, quite honestly, and you’ll see why as we get into
this. This is The Emoji Movie… when this first got announced, I knew this would
be a real piece of work, but even that couldn’t have prepared me for this.
