The Worst Idea Of All Time - REVIEW: The Emoji Movie
Episode Date: April 13, 2020This was originally a pay-walled episode available only to Patreon supporters. Please consider if you can #PayTheBoiz at patreon.com/join/TWIOAT.Hey man, fuck you folks - this movie full sucked. It's ...a quagmire of terrible story, corporate intrusion and unbelievably bad decision-making across the board. Hoisting a whole film's story on an emoji? Dumb. Putting it on the 'Meh' emoji? Insane. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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just play it cool welcome to the world inside your phone where everyone is expected to act
one way their whole life oh snap ow my name is gene and i'm supposed to be a man
you know like meh who cares my problem is i have more than one emotion check this out
son please tell me you weren't laughing just now Hello everyone and also fuck you
For choosing the emoji movie in this Patreon Power Special
Watch, Desirers Club, episode 30-something
Where would this rank alongside the worst movies you've ever seen?
There was something
I don't even know how it was as bad as it was you know because it wasn't
that long and that's mainly my thing i think uh some of the ways that it was as bad as it was
would be in premise see remarkably unclear premise and then within the premise the choice of
protagonist uh the idea that we are going to watch a movie around someone who's defining characteristic is a desire to be meh.
There's also an area where the movie failed.
And, yeah, plot then. I mean, they're all bundled into the same sort of package of shit.
I actually just looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes.
I was so taken by how bad it was, I wanted to know what the review was.
And so often the critics' consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, I find,
is a really accurate descriptor of, you know,
it sort of boils down the issue with the movie to its component parts.
So the Emoji Movie got 7% on the Rotten Tomato meter, and the Critics Consensus, which is
where they have that sort of pithy one to two sentence description.
Yeah.
At first I thought the webpage wasn't loading because I couldn't see it, but then I looked
a little closer, and they've just used an emoji, which is the red circle with a strike
through the middle.
Wow.
As if to say no. They used an emoji to describe the red circle with a strike through the middle wow as if to say
no they used an emoji to describe the emoji movie take that filmmakers they really hammered him and
it it tickled me pink because um it is accurate this should not have been made yeah should not
have been chosen should not have been watched um i kind of don't want to talk about it at all
because I feel like that's giving them too much credit.
What did we watch it for then?
I don't know, man.
It's really awful.
I didn't like it.
I don't know why.
It wasn't even...
I can't...
This is a hard one.
This is difficult.
Let's start with who was this movie made for?
Jittery teens.
Unmedicated, hyperactive 13-year-olds.
They can't be hyperactive because I've got a pretty mellow sort of disposition
and pretty sound attention span at this juncture in my life, I think.
Yeah.
And that was unsit-thruable.
Right.
I think it was made for teens.
unsit-thru-able.
Right.
I think it was made for teens.
I think it was made for an idea of a very vaguely painted idea of a teen.
The concept of a teen.
This was made for the concept of a modern teen at the time of Mac,
which was 2017.
And I just want to quickly ask you, Tim.
Yeah.
Outside of the context of this podcast, are you a completionist? Are you someone who, if you pick up and start a book,
you feel an obligation to yourself to finish the book,
no matter how much or little you're enjoying it?
Generally speaking, yeah, I need to get to the bottom of what I've started.
Would that be true of a TV series?
Not always for TV series, especially when there's lots of seasons.
A book, yes.
And a movie?
Yeah, I need to get to the end of the film. You need to get to the end movie? Yeah, I need to get to the end of the film.
You need to get to the end of the film?
I need to get to the end of the film.
When's the last time you didn't finish a movie?
The only one I can remember, and I know it's happened I think twice ever,
was Save the Last Dance.
With Julia Stiles?
I love that movie.
I hated it.
But this is probably...
A long time ago.
20 years maybe. Honestly, it probably... A long time ago. 20 years, maybe.
Honestly, it could have been 20 years ago.
Do you feel a temptation to do it?
Like, watching this movie, within seconds.
Here's what's bad about it.
And here's how you find out that it's bad right from the get-go.
There is wall-to-wall exposition and dialogue to explain a concept so
convoluted it just makes you question how they managed to wrangle the tens of millions of dollars
involved to put this project together here's the idea that the emoji movie wants you to think would
be a fun idea for a film there are a bunch of emojis living in your phone and the way that we select
emojis is we see a representation of them on the keyboard and then when we hit them inside the phone
there's all of these living emojis which then have to be scanned by a laser every time you use one, and that scan is what renders into your message.
It could be your Facebook messenger, your WhatsApp, your text, what have you.
Well, I mean, arguably, yes, but the emojis in this film deal entirely,
they live entirely inside of the text messaging function of the boy's cell phone.
Okay. messaging function of the the protagonist the the boy's cell phone because um okay they're unfamiliar i don't care enough to argue with you but i don't think that's right they're unfamiliar
with instagram twitter facebook they journey to all of these apps that's true presumably paid for
placements and those are all sort of a new part of the adventure if you want to know why the
proletariat is rising up to elect bernie sanders and burn
capitalist america as we know it to the ground look to the emoji movie as evidence of what
capitalism can do to art if left unchecked can i just say in explaining why i thought a very small
and insignificant and technical part of what you're saying was factually inaccurate with reference to
the movie i think we may have stumbled into a more interesting prospect which would be you know how
emojis rendered differently on different apps imagine a film wherein the emojis from the
messenger function of your phone meet the twitter versions of themselves or the facebook versions of
themselves hey now that's fun that's kind of a doppelganger thing.
You've got crisis of identity.
You've got, you know,
tribalism is one set better than the other.
These are some juicy themes.
This is not what the Emoji Movie is.
The Emoji Movie is about,
we follow the journey of Gene,
who is a defunct meh emoji,
who is broken.
So he keeps rendering different faces
when it's his time to shine as an emoji your your sole purpose and operation in life is to
represent only one expression or and he's meh meh m-e-h sort of indifference i believe would be
the longer word for it and it does yeah it's his job and he can't
do it and he gets selected as a text message so as in addition to not caring about the emojis
within the film the film also goes to trouble of making sure we don't care about the the characters
the people who use the emojis to communicate with one another who are distilled to just a boy and a
girl who like each other two layers
operating neither of which work and a third juicy cherry on the shit sundae which is uh the star of
the show is tj miller who i believe has since been cancelled i think he's cancelled almost at the time
of release i feel like uh cancellation has been sort of desperately trying to latch itself on to TJ Miller and the guy's oiled up to some degree because it can't quite stick.
I haven't heard Haydn or hear from him for a little while.
He's touring.
He's selling out shows.
I've just been scooching around on the Emoji Movie Twitter account.
And while the guy is, by all accounts, a deplorable figure,
his voice is one of the few things I think they got.
Like, his voice talent, I can see the merit in the casting.
Do you know Alana Glazer was supposed to be the hacker?
What happened?
Don't know.
IMDB didn't tell me.
I didn't mind.
They had Anna Faris as the hacker, and I didn't mind that.
Yeah, it was fine.
Reuniting the Yogi Bear crew.
The animation style was good.
And everything else was bad. it was a real waste they ripped off the concept of a lot of the stuff from reboot do you know about reboot guy don't
know about reboot reboot was seminal to my childhood this was a show made by the canadian
broadcasting channel and it was the first ever fully computer animated series.
It starred Enzo, a young boy,
and Bob, his sort of caretaker that wasn't quite as dead
but took on a fatherly figure.
They were sprites inside of a computer,
and there were game cubes that would land on them
and thrust them into a different environment.
There were other characters.
They lived inside the mainframe.
The baddie was hexadecimal from memory.
And it was fucking awesome.
It got real dark because it was a kid show.
And, you know, it was an adventure series,
but somewhat lighthearted.
But then I'm pretty sure fucking Bob died in the end of one of the seasons,
like season three.
And then there was this huge amount of time that passed.
And then season four kicks off and Enzo's growing up to be Bob's age.
And he's like this grizzled dude who's been on the internet.
It was wild.
He had tattoos and a beard and shit.
It sounds good.
It was great. And this just ripped a beard and shit. It sounds good. It was great.
And this just ripped off so many elements from Reboot,
but without that cool, almost cyberpunk for kids edge to it.
Yeah, the problem with this movie, I can almost see how it got made,
which was whoever pitched it sort of said,
so I'm thinking about a movie that goes behind the scenes of emojis,
which is intriguing enough as a prospect.
Is it?
I think so.
I can see how if you're pitching a movie for kids or teens and you say,
hey, kids use emojis all the time.
Imagine if there was a world behind the screen where they live their own lives
and they get into all sorts of mischief and hijinks.
And you go, that's intriguing.
Well, tell me about the plot.
And it's sort of from that point where the entire pitch unraveled and
then i feel like it maybe got greenlit just on the basis of the elevator pitch and at no point
i i often think about if i'm trying to conceive of an idea myself or i'm watching an idea there
are certain things that certain questions that you know you can ignore in the hopes that you're
ignoring that means that all audience will also ignore them
and not acknowledge them.
And this movie felt like it was constantly asking itself questions
about the laws of the universe and the rules of logic
that all of the characters had to abide.
And it was asking them at every turn
and it never had the right answer.
And so instead of just ignoring it, it had asked it
and then they panicked and they would move on to a different,
also unanswerable question. And so it was just pivoting from sort of conv ignoring it, it had asked it, and then they panicked, and they would move on to a different, also unanswerable question.
And so it was just pivoting from sort of convoluted, nonsensical idea to the next.
You just need to have the confidence to not ask the question. Exactly.
Just take me there.
At one point, we're in Just Dance, which is a dance app game thing.
We just take a break from the movie to explain what the rules of just dance are.
I'm watching a fucking movie.
I'm not playing the game.
Don't give me this.
I don't want your rules.
Yeah.
It's bullshit.
Conversely, in the other scene where we watch a game being played in the movie Candy Crush,
they had that fucking decency at least to not.
No, actually, do you know what?
They do explain how Candy Crush works.
It's just instead of it being from the voice of the host of candy crush the characters are explaining it to one
another we watch characters play candy crush apps must have bankrolled this movie oh yeah i think
what you're saying about how this movie got made is entirely incorrect i think think Mark Zuckerberg in a cocaine binge when,
how can I fuck up a younger generation to grab them as part of my fold as
part of the tribe.
But this movie is not a way to do that.
Kids movie.
And he said,
what are you talking about?
And someone said,
kids love emojis. We're going to make an animated film about what they do where they come from and what they're all about
and then he went to his office and pulled out a briefcase that had 68 million us dollars in it
gave it to the person said make the film is that how much this movie costs I don't know I'm guessing
it doesn't feel like
it's wrong
it's very easy
to complain about the movie
it is
how do we champion this
no
we don't need to champion it
there was one moment
I enjoyed
I actually quite liked
the villain
was played by
a woman named
was an emoji
called Smiler
who's a very
smiling emoji
who within
the lore of the film was the first ever emoji,
played by a sort of very overwhelmingly positive
but also diabolically evil Maya Rudolph.
I thought her performance was sound within the very limited range
that she was given.
At one moment, they enter the world of Instagram,
and you can see all the photos in front of you,
and they actually walk into one of the photos
and the photo is then rendered in three dimensions
so all of the characters are frozen
and you can walk around and within the photo
and admire different details and elements
and I thought that was the first time
they really convincingly had fun
or at least...
This is about 20 minutes before the movie ends, folks.
Yeah, after a very confusing one hour
and 15 minute run time
and those were
sort of the moments that did well but i think instead of just taking pot shots at it because
i do think that somewhere within this there is a movie that is of interest or at least a possible
film like can we troubleshoot this together and try and build a serviceable emoji movie i want to
come i want to say yes and to you, Guy Montgomery,
but I can't bring myself to do it.
What do you want to talk about?
I don't know because anything in serviceable...
I will do it by myself
and you can take all of this horrible energy
that this movie has planted within you
and just direct it towards me.
So I will be an unflappable positive presence
as I try to fix this.
All right. You'll be a smiler. I i want you to embrace i'll be meh yeah this i mean now we're
getting into it well no but it's a risky it is a risky proposition to have a movie
like because it's i always think about show titles you're opening yourself up to like the
most dismissive reviews imaginable when you know the movie was about the journey of me and i left feeling like i was at you know i was
me i don't know they probably they're professional writers some of these reviews they do more than
that so i think you'd be surprised some of those film reviewers also suck that's right some of them
do not these two boys the mad ladsads. The fucking crazy cats. Meow.
I think what you need here. I want to watch cats again.
I don't want to watch the emoji movie.
A movie revealing the lives of emojis.
I want to see how emojis are conceived.
I want to see these sexless little freaks.
You want to see them fucking.
I want to see them fuck.
What's it called?
Reproduce.
Yeah.
I want to see.
Well, let's get into it
How do you reckon these little dudes reproduce?
We see quite a cavalcade of different emojis
So maybe they've all got different
Do you reckon they're different species?
Yes
I want to see some interbestial fucking between the emojis
They all seem to be roughly the same size
And communicate of a universal language
They're sort of that classic
They're rendered in that classic kids movie fashion where they have expressive faces arms and legs they understand the concept of attraction
and emotion and love yeah but beyond that it's sort of all left deliberately who do you want
to see fuck in the emoji movie i want to see devil fuck shit they had a certain they yeah
they had a certain patrick Stewart? Back and forth.
I would love to see the Trojan horse and the hacker fuck.
Oh, they're not emojis.
The Trojan horse?
No.
The hacker was?
No.
She was a princess emoji hidden as a hacker.
There's no hacker emoji.
But she was an emoji.
Okay, so you want to see a princess fuck horse yes that is a real movie it's called debbie does dallas you can watch that now isn't that a snuff film i don't think so
i don't think so i hope not it did the movie you're describing didn't get a cinema release
right it's just online uh this is pre-internet their movie that's a bestiality movie from like the 70s
Or the 60s even
It's about a woman who fucks a horse man
Is it a doco?
Nah man it's not a doco it's a pornography
It is a pornographic material
Are some
Pornographic films documentaries by
Default?
No
But some documentaries can be pornographic i guess blended reality i'm just
saying if you want to see a woman fuck a horse or a horse fuck a woman however you want to put it
i'm trying to fix the movie in front of us i can't see a devil fucker shit because those things aren't
animated and they're not alive you know well, unless Debbie is recognized by some established monarchy
within the various different countries on Earth.
Yeah, that's true.
That movie does not fulfill my wish.
Hey, big guy, aren't all women princesses?
I hope you get cancelled.
I think I might after this episode.
So I think maybe just spend more time.
Don't worry so much about getting around the phone
and showing us all of the apps. Just spend more time like don't worry so much about getting around the phone and showing us all of their apps
just spend more time in Textopolis
let us see the functionality of the city
like I want to see these
because if you have a group of characters
who can only
perform the emotions that they're
ascribed at birth
then let's see how that actually unfolds
in a community
there's a possibility within that premise.
You know, you could see maybe Happy wound up with Sad,
and they live a married life together.
You can see small domestic scenes.
That's more interesting.
But every time the concept of an emoji movie
throws up the opportunity for interest,
the movie veers the other way.
Like, Jean, who is the protagonist,
who is the meh emoji,
is the child of two other meh emojis.
So they just get on because they're both meh
and they have a child who's also meh.
Happy and sad or like sad and I don't know,
fucking crazy equals a meh.
Like give me that, you know.
Yeah.
There's a story there.
There's a lesson to be learned.
We've all got our part to play.
People are different.
You don't have to have a partner who's exactly the same as you.
We fill in each other's gaps, etc.
But every opportunity they have to give me something,
they fucking run the, they give me a six,
I am not shitting you guys.
A six minute scene inside of Candy Crush.
This movie just exists to shift apps.
And that is the most depressing concept I've ever heard in my life.
That is so sad to me.
Rome has fallen.
Let's not forget that James Corden also plays a prominent role in this film. And it didn't
help. Known legend, James Corden.
I would like to quickly read to you this
approved release
on the synopsis of the film from
the studio, Sony Pictures
Entertainment. I like that you prefaced it
with approved. Sanctioned by,
written by, in fact. This movie
unlocks the never
before seen secret world inside your smartphone.
Hidden within the messaging app is Textopolis,
a bustling city where all your favorite emojis live,
hoping to be selected by the phone's user.
In this world, each emoji has only one facial expression,
except for Gene, an exuberant emoji who was born without a filter and is bursting with multiple expressions.
Relatable?
I think so.
Determined to become normal like the other emojis, Gene enlists the help of his handy best friend, High Five,
in the notorious code breaker emoji, Jailbreak.
Together, they embark on an epic app venture.
Fuck you.
Through the apps on the phone, each its own wild and fun world to find the code that will
fix Gene.
But when a great danger threatens the phone, the fate of all emojis depends on these three
unlikely friends who must save their world before it's deleted forever.
That's the synopsis.
I'm lost in that.
That's supposed to be a short, clarifying statement on what we can expect.
And even that confuses me.
And I've seen the fucking movie.
I've just watched it.
Does that sound fun to you?
No.
It sounds convoluted and insane.
And not like a movie.
It sounds like maybe a video game.
Not a good one.
Scrub it up.
Tidy it up.
What did you see?
Give it to me in three sentences.
Oh, okay.
The synopsis of the film.
The emoji movie.
the emoji movie,
a story of finding out that,
fuck, it's hard.
It's hard after just watching the movie.
I feel drained.
A little creative energy vampire that film was.
It's something about being okay with yourself
and not changing.
The emoji movie.
You're all good, man. So the emoji movie you're all good man so beyond that you're all good beyond the white you're sweet beyond you're fine it's okay so people love you
beyond yeah yeah yeah thank you really good beyond beyond the sort of commercial imperative of the film you
think when someone says but what's the movie saying yeah the core message is it's okay to be
yourself that's what this movie should be saying and what it could have been saying yeah i think
it's probably what it tried to say because ultimately um this you know they go on all
their fucking adventures through the phone phone to get to the source code
so that the hacker can change it to fix Gene,
but he doesn't need to be fixed.
That's kind of the...
It's remarkable how long the movie feels
for how short it is.
It is remarkable.
That's the right word for it.
It's actually incredible.
I don't understand how it had this effect inside of whatever the run what
did i say it was like an hour it's an hour it's listed as an hour 24 but they've got i think an
eight minute credit sequence so you're really much closer to an hour 15 uh towards the end of it they
arrive at the drop at dropbox which dropbox is in this children's film you know that productivity
app dropbox for you to use in your office yeah that's in this children's film. You know that productivity app Dropbox for you to use in your office?
Yeah, that's in this children's movie for like, I don't know, four minutes scene.
And to upload themselves to the cloud, they have to get past this firewall.
And when the three emojis arrive at the firewall,
it's a very sort of sound piece of filmmaking
because as someone watching the movie,
you realize that you must also clear this firewall to be released from the prison in which you are trapped.
In the instance of the emojis, it's the prison of forced normalcy.
In the prison of watching the movie, it's knowing that you're watching the movie to completion.
And the characters guess wrong several times to zero comedic effect.
And you sort of sit there.
They've laid it all out for you to know
what the password is.
Also not what a firewall is or what it does.
It's not a fucking password checker.
You know, like, fuck.
Just make it a gate or something.
You took a lot of issue with the various different
sort of technology, the use of technology and technological.
Mainly right at the end.
Everything gets deleted, wiped from the phone.
The phone's in the process of being basically reformatted
at like a genius bar.
Apple didn't pay any money to be in this picture.
Not a cent.
Do you respect that?
Yeah, fucking A.
It's because, is Steve Jobs still alive?
No.
2017.
No, I think he's dead.
Of all the phone providers...
Apple know better than to get involved in this hot mess.
Which phone provider would you marry to this film?
Nokia.
This feels like a Nokia movie?
Absolutely.
It's desperate.
It's a swing for the fences.
We're putting the whole house on this.
It's Kmart and Grown Ups 2.
Our marketing budget for this quarter is probably the last amount of promotional money we're going to spend to try and save the company before 3,000 Swedes lose their job.
Put it all on 13 black.
Spin the fucking wheel. Isn't it crazy to think when i was a teen nokia
was sort of the a model of reliability untouchable and their supremacy of the the mobile market you
know and actually it's quite a neat marriage because in the same way sony represented the
top end of electronics the most high quality quality products, the most desirable TVs or whatever.
TVs, Walkmans.
This is a Sony Pictures production about a Nokia phone.
I feel like Sony constantly shits the bed.
But then this movie made a lot of money,
and I think Sony Pictures generally do.
So who's really laughing?
Probably Sony.
I'll tell you who's not laughing.
Mr. Sony.
Tim Nogai laughing,
and imaginably no one listening to this podcast
is laughing at that
6,000 jokes
they tried to cram
into this movie
every
second
there was an attempt
I just made it up
like everything I say
I keep thinking it's real
you said it during the movie
there's just a relentless
march of shit gags
one after another
I think you're in
such a foul mood
because this room
is deprived of oxygen
and filled with CO2.
We've been in this room for not just the length of the movie,
but also the length of work session and friend zone beforehand.
Work session.
And I asked you, I said, Tim, you need to go outside.
Yes.
Because it will make you feel alive.
And you said, no, going outside.
It's my sweet treat once I've completed the podcast.
And it will be.
And it looks so tempting out there.
It's not right.
It's negatively.
We are in the height of summer right now,
and I'm going to estimate it's like 27 degrees centigrade,
which is what, like 100?
That's outside with a light breeze.
Yeah, and we're in a completely non-air-conditioned little box.
Non-air-conditioned, non-ventilated.
One of the walls is just glass, which really helps allow heat in.
That's a good point.
And then also to trap said heat.
Never thought about it that way, Guy, but you're dead right.
Glass is incredible in this respect.
It certainly is.
What was a positive experience during the movie?
The animation style i liked um which
makes me feel sorry for the visual effects artists because they they took their time and they did it
it was very it looked very dreamworksy to me it was like how to train your dragon very rarely do i
not take to the animation style of a film a modern film like i think i i as a rule you get on board i will enjoy any animation so
i'm trying to think of instances where i've been frustrated i feel like what about that christmas
movie we watched the kids of that was unique and it's spectacular badness i really enjoyed it yeah
but for all the wrong reasons it doesn't so for the end for this movie yeah again i loved it flies
under it's a waste of the technology.
You said at some point that whatever it was required to build...
There was a render farm that exported this movie
that could have been used to try and solve cancer.
It wasn't.
That computing power got put into the Emoji movie instead.
This is why humanity cannot have nice things.
Because we have imbued lumps of rock with lightning,
and they do fantastic math for us,
and then the application we throw at that incredible process we've made
is producing a movie where Knight of the Realm Sir Patrick Stewart
plays human feces and delivers six lines
for what I imagine is a million dollar paycheck.
We're just animals at the zoo man you can dress it up put your fun flat screen fucking tv big screen tvs in your house but
we're just monkeys at the zoo is that what i mean i feel like all of the takeaways you're presenting
from this movie are very dark and represent the worst of humanity it It's just, I don't know. I hated it.
It's that classic dangerous combo of a writer-director as well.
Like there wasn't enough.
Same person.
Yeah.
To me, it doesn't feel like a one-person show.
For me, it does not feel like not enough people.
It feels like too many people.
Yeah, and that's, I think,
probably quite a common problem with animated films
because there's so much money that goes into them.
And you kind of like, I guess it's very expensive to remake stuff maybe.
I find it.
Because you don't want to fuck it up.
Yeah, actually, that's a good question.
You see the behind the scenes of the Pixar movies
and they storyboard them for like four years.
I find it more depressing when an animated movie fails this aggressively
and is this bad because it does take longer
and it is harder to correct mistakes as they're happening.
And so the idea of advancing deeper and deeper
into this ongoing mistake or disaster you're creating
becomes really like overwhelmed.
It's a quicksand sort of experience.
You're talking about cats.
You're describing cats as well now.
Yeah, but it's...
TJ Miller said, and I don't know if this is true,
but TJ Miller said this is the world's fastest produced animated feature film ever.
That's the sort of soundbite you really want your lead actor to be giving out
as the movie is simply savaged by critics.
There's not the sort of information they can latch onto
and sort of, you know, point to as a reason why the movie might be awful.
What's your favourite emoji?
Not from the film.
Oh, just in general.
I don't really use emojis.
But I tell you what it is.
Here's your problem.
I know what it is.
It's the upside down smiley.
What does that represent to you?
Anything, and that's the beauty of it. hate that do you i like too ambiguous i need to know what an emoji represents
there's an emoji that has like there's an emoji that is like gritting teeth or bearing teeth oh
yeah that's a good one which is sort of like this and i never know what when someone sends it to me
i don't know if they're happy or sad or isn't that like something's fucked up and i'm nervous about what's about to the other shoe to drop possibly that's
how i've always read i like clarity in my the only unclear emoji i like is the sort of rumpled face
it's semi-new it's got like it's its mouth does not go in a straight line or a smile it's sort of
it's a squiggle and one of its eyes is kind of crushed down it's almost
cocking an eyebrow and it's just like wasted it doesn't look wasted it just looks like well we
are really in a situation here and that is who should be you shouldn't have matt lead the film
you should have a definable emotional quality exactly or at least you identified that immediately
you were like they have backed the wrong fucking emoji here to hang
a film off of 100 the only emoji is short for emotional icon i assume that was a gag i liked
what at one point uh gene the lead bumps into an emote icon which is for anyone listening who's
not familiar with them it's an assembly of characters
that are otherwise used in punctuation
that could create faces.
So it's like a backslash and then semicolon,
which creates a slanty face.
Winky face.
Yeah.
Or yeah, it's like a...
So it's not an emoji,
but you're just using characters on the keyboard.
It's a close parenthesis dash colon
would be a smiley face. The internet used to be lousy with him back in the keyboard. It's a close parenthesis dash colon would be a smiley face.
The internet used to be lousy with him
back in the day. And he bumped into
one of them and
part of its face fell apart and he said
I hate bumping into old people
or something. You're knocking over the elderly.
And that was
I think anything that
registered as a joke and that I could
understand the constituent parts of
was fine by me.
Feels like we're very drained from the film.
How do you feel coming out of a mojo?
Or is it the room?
I hated it.
The room, yeah, I got up halfway through.
I said, Tim, can we please pause the movie?
I said no.
And I was saying to get a glass of water,
and Tim said no. then i i think i
probably at that point looked as depressed as you would have seen me for quite a while
it was a low ebb i was in a dark zone and then i went outside i got some fresh air i filled up two
big glasses of icy water i brought them back and i sat down i said i feel lighter i feel a million
times better and so there's some positivity i got from that experience that carried me through to the end
that I sort of was hoping to bring to the podcast.
But I feel like you've used your system override
in how much you despise the movie, the experience.
I am powerful.
I'm a powerful black hole of positivity.
Yeah.
Who was your favorite voice actor in the film?
We knew a lot of famous people that were there.
I enjoyed Maya Rudolph. Probably most intriguing was there were some internet trolls. actor in the film we knew a lot of famous people that were there uh i enjoyed maya rudolph probably
most intriguing was there were some internet trolls that doesn't make sense by the way no
get into it why so there are internet trolls who are sort of these green they're meant to be quite
grotesque uh creatures who represent sort of just negativity or, you know,
naysayers, people who will be rude to you for no apparent reason.
They just were meant to represent internet trolls.
But they can't exist in the same world as emojis because internet trolls are people on keyboards who have the use of emojis to communicate
their negative thoughts or feelings.
I don't understand.
That was an example.
Do you know what, though?
I didn't question it in the film, which is an example of the movie.
You just skipped past something.
Yeah, not asking the question and therefore not confusing the audience.
If they had had that attitude with everything, though,
then you wouldn't question anything.
It'd just be like, here's a bunch of internet-style shit that's here.
But because they stopped down, they're like, hey, here's a bunch of internet style shit that's here but because
they like stop down they're like hey here's how let's dance works shut up for a second movie guy
fucking pay attention to me for a second i'm going to teach you the rules of this app that
you're not playing yeah you're in the fucking movies right now it's bad outrageous christine
aguilera was the voice of that just dance woman by the way gotcha and the most intriguing casting or the one she did they killed her this is uh just an example of the lack
of sort of storytelling now so i feel like they have no care for the characters in this all right
we hang out with the so they've made a big human woman sprite instructor for Let's Dance,
and we hang out with her for a bit.
There's a bit of back and forth.
She's leading a dance.
She rewards them with praise and little achievements when they're doing well.
And then we zoom out to the human world where the boy's phone is making sound
because these apps are fucking around
and then the guy like freaks out because he's in class he's getting embarrassed by just starts
making noise so he deletes the app and you see all of the edifice and all of the sort of
infrastructure around the app start to crumble away and disappear into the ether and you watch
christina aguilera's character die in front of you. Quite horrifying. It's kind of awesome.
Especially because this is a kids film.
But yeah, one of the internet trolls was voiced
by Jeff Ross and I was
very familiar with the voice. I couldn't pick it and I actually
had to look it up to know. And I guess
in creating a question I
wanted the answer to, the movie
succeeded. So that was my favourite
piece of voice. Would you like to do
yours? I've got something to read to you here after you tell me.
I don't care.
Go.
Well, the film was inspired.
By Wreck-It Ralph.
They saw that and they were like, we too want to make some money.
The film was in fact inspired by the director Tony Leondis.
And I just want to quickly see what else Tony Leondis did because he's done.
Bad things. And i'm not talking films
i'm talking life actions directed one of the kung fu panda films they were good lilo and stitch two
uh yeah the guys okay so we know how to do animated animated films the film was inspired
by director tony leondis' love of toy story.
Could you see that?
Oh, honey.
I know.
Wanting to make a new take on the concept, he began asking himself,
what is the new toy out there that hasn't been explored?
At the same time, imagine this.
If you're trying to come up with an idea, imagine this lightning rod striking you through your phone.
At the same time, Leondis received a text message with an idea imagine this lightning rod striking you through your phone at the same time leon does received a text message with an emoji which helped him realize that this was the
world he wanted to explore and fleshing out the story leon does considered having the emojis visit
the real world however his producer felt that the world inside a phone was much more interesting
which inspired leon does to create the story of where and how emojis lived well then he just
watched fucking four seasons of reboot back to back or however many exists and then bloody set
to work on a screenplay tony you made a lot of money at the end of the day what were you here
to do this is a film that contains product placement for a lot of the screen time
from uh incredibly amoral companies including facebook spotify you know who respectively have
damaged our faith twitter we'll hold on for a second as responsible they've destroyed our faith in privacy They're just selling our data
Spotify, ripping off artists
What's Twitter done?
Not taking the Nazis down
People keep telling me that
Helping disseminate disinformation
Not policing that
I guess they had to pay to play in this
Because otherwise the company would sue them
For having the logos in their name
Instagram, a Facebook property
It's all bad news Dropbox however the company would sue them for having the logos in there, right? Instagram, a Facebook property. Yeah.
It's all bad news.
Dropbox, however.
Yeah, I think they're all right.
They've had some security breaches over the years,
but hey, who among us hasn't?
That's right.
Just get some two-factor authentication on there.
The point remains, I feel like this was a payday, and in that regard, Tony, you done did it.
But the thing is, Toy Story was a commercial success too.
And it was also heartwarming.
Yeah.
Toy Story 4, probably one of the last movies I remember to make me cry.
I shouldn't laugh at that.
I'm just comparing it to our mood coming out of the Emoji film
and that Tony's reach was to try and replicate that absolute masterpiece of cinema.
This has been an entirely depressing endeavor,
and I would like to just wave the bird.
We are filming this at the Patreon pouts who selected this movie.
Well done.
Well done, everyone.
I'd like to congratulate you on picking such a god-awful film.
I feel very affected by it, so I'm going to go and do something else now.
Probably get on a big bathtub with a bunch of ice,
drop my body temperature.
I'm going to throw a plugged-in toaster in there.
That's fine.
Tim, I'd like to give you a motivational quote to end this.
An emotionative?
No.
Dang it.
This is a quote from Forbes.com,
which used to be some sort of financial empire website
and is now, I think, they don't know,
like an offshoot of BuzzFeed.
Do today's duty.
Fight today's temptation.
Do not weaken and distract yourself
by looking forward to things you cannot see
and could not understand if you saw them.
Do today what should be done.
Your tomorrow may never come.
Today is the pupil of yesterday.
That was the emoji movie in a quote.
Go fuck yourselves.
Whoever voted for this, go fuck yourselves.
Vote in the 25th Reich or whatever,
that movie that was suggested.
Do something for us,
for once in your goddamn lives.
Tim, I love you, but this is why I didn't like spending time with you. Something for us. For once in your goddamn lives. Tim.
Yeah.
I love you.
But this is why I didn't like spending time with you.
I gave us a primer.
That was good.
Negative associations.
Negative associations with you.
Negative associations with the film.
Negative associations with your lovely house.
You like Primer though?
It was good.
It was the time travel one.
We watched in LA.
Oh, that was fucking crazy.
Yeah, you guys have put me on to some pretty interesting shit.
But go fuck yourselves this month.
Bye, everyone.
Thanks for playing.
Okay, son, what do we do after we go potty?
Should we wash our hands?
We're number two.