10 Best Fan Theories For 2017's Biggest Movies

There’s only one way to explain how bad The Emoji Movie is: it’s not really a film after all but an hour and a half long advertisement designed to sell mobile apps to young, impressionable minds. Sure, it might look like a kid’s movie – all bright colours, noise and lame gags – but its piss thin plot and total absence of any moral message combined with the sheer number of app product placements suggest otherwise.

Now, product placement is nothing new of course. Spend a bit of time really looking at your favourite movies and you’re sure to find a few of their corporate sponsors lurking in the background, but The Emoji Movie takes the cake. All the mobile apps you can think of are there – Instagram, Dropbox, Twitter, Spotify, Candy Crush – and a few you probably can’t like Crackle and China’s WeChat and an overlong Just Dance segment that can only be described as a shameless shill.

Essentially, it’s just one long bombardment of app promotion that seems to encourage young ‘uns to spend even more time and money on their mobile phones than they already do. Although this theory explains a lot about the overall quality (or lack thereof) of the movie it doesn’t explain how on earth they convinced the usually wonderful Patrick Stewart to play the poop emoji. Some wonders will never cease.