There are certain things that should never be animated or have a starring role in a movie. Poop is one of them. But that hasn't stopped Sony Pictures Animation from turning it, and all the other emoji that grace your texts, into the scary, animated emoji stars of EmojiMovie: Express Yourself.
The production company says that the film "will offer a surprising and comic take on the secret world of our phones and the little characters that have become daily necessities in global interpersonal communication." Note to Sony: We want to know about the secret life of pets, not emoji characters that look like a mash-up of the Hamburger Helper hand and Bratz dolls. (Engadget's interpretation of the emoji, which it describes as looking like "mutated Pac-Man characters," is also an accurate description.)
According to Entertainment Weekly, the film is set in the made-up messaging app Textopolis, where an emoji heads off on an epic app-venture to become a "normal" emoji, whatever that means. His friends are Hi-5, the high five emoji (#clever), who is voiced by James Corden, and a code breaker voiced by Broad City's incredible Ilana Glazer. Props to Sony Pictures Animation for putting a woman in a leading tech role, something that much of Silicon Valley still struggles to do.
But do we really need animated poop and smiley face emoji running around the screen? Maybe it's not that different from animated vegetables on TV. And perhaps the movie will surprise us like The Lego Movie did back in 2014. But if animated emoji aren't a sign of the apocalypse we don't know what is.
EmojiMovie comes to theaters on August 11, 2017.
EmojiMovie comes to theaters on August 11, 2017.