The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

Yet more problems with the Emoji Movie that came back to me after letting it settle in me for a while:

• An emoji cannot be reprogrammed any more than any character already in the typepad of a phone; it's a Unicode character, so that entire thrust of the plot makes no sense. 
  
• Also, the "hacking" scene; besides just randomly guessing potential passwords not actually being hacking, it's kind of telling that we get more insight into Alex' personality when they're just randomly guessing things he might use as a password than at any point in the rest of the film. What does it mean that he apparently considers Krav Maga, Major Lazer, and Skate or Die important to him? 
  
• The whole thing about Alex angsting about texting Addie and getting her attention makes no sense when you consider HE ALREADY HAS HER NUMBER, implying he was already on intimate enough terms (in that middle school way) that he doesn't need to worry about her potentially not liking him. 
  
• The fact that Gene can do multiple facial expressions and this is a horrifying thing that could doom the phone makes no sense even by the logic of the film; other emojis (not even including his father, who's revealed to be capable of multiple emotions) actually act out of character [Christ, the monkeys Gene meets in the first five minutes or so go from staid businessmonkeys to monkey hijinx on a fucking dime) and nobody seems to make an issue of it just as long as they make the right face when they get scanned. 
  

So now, we have four more reasons this week's entry in the Deep Hurting Project is horrible, and three of them elaborating on how the plot manages to undermine its own logic on a very fundamental level. How the fuck did nobody notice that? I know I'm probably beating a dead horse, but, funny thing: two weeks ago, I saw a bus with an ad with Gene and Hi-5 on it promoting some new emojis. Not two years ago, TWO WEEKS AGO.



If you think I'm going into a bit too much detail about a shitty movie, well, next week's going to be a documentary (either Hilary's America or The Undefeated) and, especially if the former is actually available at the library on Saturday, there will be a lot of talk about the bullshit either way.