The Emoji Movie is dealing with a barrage of bad press ahead of its release in theatres next week.
Reviews of the film — starring T.J. Miller, Ilana Glazer and James Corden — are in, and to say that the Sony Pictures project is being widely panned by critics worldwide would be a massive understatement.
“This movie’s ‘believe in yourself’ message is borne out, in a perverse way, by the very fact that it even exists. And yet the whole thing remains nakedly idiotic,” writes the New York Times’ Glenn Kenny.
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The Wrap’s Alonso Duralde, meanwhile, calls the film “a soul-crushing disaster because it lacks humour, 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.”
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does. The Guardian’s Charles Bramesco issued his review of the animated film this week, calling it “evil:” “The Emoji Movie is a force of insidious evil, a film that feels as if it was dashed off by an uninspired advertising executive,” he writes.
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And in one of the harshest reviews to date, The New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski writes that the making of the film signalled, of all things, the apocalypse: “Hear that? It’s the end of the world.”
The Emoji Movie arrives in theatres, for better or worse, on August 4.