The Emoji Movie Review: 3 Ups & 7 Downs
Downs...
7. It's A Creepy Exercise In Product Placement
It goes without saying that The Emoji Movie is, at its rotten core, a craven attempt to market smartphone apps to children, complete with any micro-transactions and subscription fees they might entail.
The likes of Facebook, YouTube, Crackle and Instagram are briefly seen or name-dropped, while services and games such as Dropbox, Candy Crush, Just Dance, Spotify and Twitter are actual, honest-to-God plot points as multi-expressive emoji Gene (T.J. Miller) tries to figure out exactly what he wants to be.
The video game placements are by far the most blatant and infuriating sequences, essentially playing out as overlong demos for the few who don't know how they work. This would be bad enough in a film aimed squarely at adults, but at kids who don't know any better? It's offensive, even disgusting.
Sure, movies have been marketing products to kids directly or indirectly for decades, but ever quite this blatantly? Surely not.