emoji movie review

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The emoji movie, common sense media reviewers.

Positive messages, but colorful adventure is mostly "meh."

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Kids may learn some new emojis and app names and f

Diversity is better than conformity. Nobody should

Gene starts out desperate to fit in and do what he

Characters in danger/peril; at one point it looks

Flirting/romantic tension between emoji characters

One purposely cut-off "oh, s--t" and one unfinishe

Many real-world apps are prominently highlighted,

Characters drink a fruity party drink. There's a b

Parents need to know that The Emoji Movie is a colorful and kid-friendly -- if not particularly original -- adventure that imagines a world inside our smartphones in which each emoji is supposed to have a single expression/role. So when "meh" face Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller) breaks those expectations, chaos…

Educational Value

Kids may learn some new emojis and app names and functions, but the film is primarily intended to entertain rather than educate.

Positive Messages

Diversity is better than conformity. Nobody should have to be or do just one thing; learning to express yourself in many different ways -- from emotions to dancing -- is healthy. Friends should always help each other, and teamwork pays off. Telling people how you feel can be difficult, but it's important to be honest. It's rewarding to find your purpose.

Positive Role Models

Gene starts out desperate to fit in and do what he's "supposed" to do, but he learns that his ability to be many things is what makes him special -- and he can be useful by being himself. Jailbreak is smart and resourceful. She rejects the role she was given but learns that having supportive friends is better than being alone. Gene's parents love him, but at first they're also a bit embarrassed by him and his differences. They learn to love him -- and themselves -- unconditionally. Many emoji characters are, by their nature, one-dimensional, but the human teenagers are a diverse group. Princess stereotypes are mocked/dismissed; a character calls out the fact that the original emoji set offered women only two choices: princess or bride.

Violence & Scariness

Characters in danger/peril; at one point it looks like they all might be deleted. The bots that chase Gene and his friends can be scary; they're relentless and have laser weapons. They sometimes delete the things they catch or want to punish (a virus, a whole app, etc.). A giant bot is particularly aggressive and intimidating. Gene's mistake leads to panic and destruction of the emoji grid. Jailbreak imagines Gene exploding. Smiler uses dental tools in a way that feels creepy and threatening. A firewall is made of actual flames. Gene is zapped when he makes password errors.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Flirting/romantic tension between emoji characters and human ones. Mel and Mary Meh declare their love for each other and kiss. Hi-5's knuckles briefly look like bare buttocks. Somewhat skimpy outfits on the main character in Just Dance.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

One purposely cut-off "oh, s--t" and one unfinished "holy s--t," plus relatively infrequent use of "loser," "shut up," "stupid," "weirdo," "freak," "dumb," "butt," "poop," "turd," "no. 2," "doody." A character calls another a "malfunction."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Many real-world apps are prominently highlighted, discussed extensively, used, and seen, including Dropbox, Spotify, Just Dance, YouTube, Facebook, Candy Crush, and more.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters drink a fruity party drink. There's a beer emoji. A scene takes place at a dive bar; a broken beer bottle is seen, and "Hack Daniels" is mentioned. Hi-5 gets a sugar high.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Emoji Movie is a colorful and kid-friendly -- if not particularly original -- adventure that imagines a world inside our smartphones in which each emoji is supposed to have a single expression/role. So when "meh" face Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller ) breaks those expectations, chaos ensues. Expect to see some destruction, suspense, and peril; the main characters are pursued by intimidating bots bent on deleting them with their laserlike weapons. But it never gets too intense for young elementary schoolers. There's a bit of flirting, and two emoji characters kiss; there are also scenes that take place in a dive bar, where drinking is implied (and there's a beer emoji character). Language is fairly mild but includes a purposely cut-off "oh, s--t," as well as insults like "loser," "shut up," and so on. Jokes about the poop emoji involve (surprise!) potty humor. Many real-life apps are featured prominently, including Dropbox, YouTube, and Just Dance. The story emphasizes the importance of being true to yourself, as well as the value of honesty and teamwork. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (93)
• Kids say (398)

Based on 93 parent reviews

the emoji movie sucks its terrible

What's the story.

THE EMOJI MOVIE invites viewers into the world of Textopolis, a colorful city inside the phone of a teenager named Alex (voiced by Jake T. Austin ). Populated entirely by emojis, Textopolis is a town in which everyone has a single role/expression, and their job is to perform that role flawlessly when Alex needs to send a text. Chaos ensues when eager young "meh" face Gene ( T.J. Miller ) freaks out on his first day at work and exhibits many different expressions, leading Alex to think something might be wrong with his phone. Head emoji Smiler ( Maya Rudolph ) is determined to keep Textopolis perfect -- and protected -- so she labels Gene a malfunction. His only hope is to track down a hacker by the name of Jailbreak ( Anna Faris ) to see whether he can be reprogrammed to correctly fulfill his "meh" destiny. So with the help of new friend Hi-5 ( James Corden ), Gene leaves Textopolis and ventures into the other apps on Alex's phone. But does Gene really need to be "fixed"?

Is It Any Good?

It's pretty risky to center a movie around the concept of "meh," which basically means "unimpressive," if you're not going to knock it out of the park -- and this one unfortunately doesn't. The Emoji Movie isn't bad , but it isn't great, either. It's "meh." Kids will definitely enjoy the colorful characters, easy-to-follow story, and potty humor ("we're number two!" the poop emoji and his son exclaim). Young viewers are also sure to catch the movie's positive messages about teamwork, friendship, and being yourself. Plus, the voice cast is pretty good. Rudolph is gleefully manic as Smiler, and there are some standouts in the supporting cast. No one is better at doing a "meh" voice than Steven Wright (as Gene's dad, Mel Meh), and Jennifer Coolidge matches him as Mel's monotone wife, Mary. And did we mention that the aforementioned poop emoji is voiced by none other than Sir Patrick Stewart ?

But most audience members old enough to actually own phones will probably realize that much of The Emoji Movie 's plot is predictable (it feels like a mashup of Inside Out and Wreck-It Ralph , with a dash of The Wizard of Oz ) and its humor only so-so. Don't be alarmed if your mind wanders and you start asking yourself questions like: "How many kids have even heard of Dropbox?" and "Why do Gene and his parents get 'people' names, while Smiler and Hi-5 just have emoji names?" and "Would a real teenager really call someone to make a tech appointment at the phone store?" If you need something else to think about, try to figure out how you'd describe the movie's plot using just emojis. Just don't pull out your phone in the theater!

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Emoji Movie 's themes and messages. What does it mean when characters say, "What good is it to be number one if there aren't any other numbers"? How do the characters learn the value of teamwork ?

How does the movie portray texting and phone use among teens? Does it seem realistic? Kids: Did seeing the movie make you want to get a phone ? What are your family's rules about devices ?

At one point, a character says of someone that "none of these people know him, but they 'like' him -- and that's what matters in this life, popularity." Do you think it's true that, in the age of social media , people want fans more than friends?

Which parts of the movie were scary to you? How much scary stuff can young kids handle?

Kids: Do you like communicating using emojis ? Why or why not? Do you know what they all mean?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 28, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : October 24, 2017
• Cast : T.J. Miller , James Corden , Patrick Stewart
• Director : Anthony Leondis
• Studio : Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Genre : Family and Kids
• Topics : Friendship
• Character Strengths : Teamwork
• Run time : 86 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : rude humor
• Last updated : March 17, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, the emoji movie.

Now streaming on:

Since “ Toy Story ” became an enormous box-office hit and a beloved modern masterpiece by giving audiences an inspired look at what ordinary toys do when their owners aren’t around, Hollywood has been striving to repeat that seemingly simple formula with a number of animated films that have offered viewers a privileged glimpse at the heretofore unseen existence of everything from the shelves of a grocery store (the execrable “Foodfight!”) to the psyche of a young girl (the stunning “ Inside Out ”). Now comes “The Emoji Movie,” a film that dares to ask “What goes on in the magical worlds contained within our cell phones?,” a notion that I do not think that anyone has ever pondered for any amount of time outside of those stuck in a focus group at Sony Animation. That is only the first of many problems with this film, a work so completely devoid of wit, style, intelligence or basic entertainment value that it makes that movie based on the Angry Birds app seem like a pure artistic statement by comparison.

The extremely dubious conceit of "The Emoji Movie" is that hidden within the messaging app in our phones is a teeming metropolis known as Textopolis, where all of the emojis live and wait to be called upon by their owners to say what mere words cannot. All emojis are supposed to have only one facial expression but Gene (T.J. Miller), who is supposed to be a “meh” like his parents ( Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge ), is just so darn exuberant that he is unable to stick with just one expression. This becomes a problem when his phone’s owner, a 14-year-old boy named Alex struggling to reach out to the girl that he likes, selects Gene for a text he is sending to her—Gene chokes at the last second and coughs up so many expressions that it is impossible to understand what he is supposed to represent. Discovering his secret and fearing what it could mean for everyone if one emoji seems to be malfunctioning, Smiler ( Maya Rudolph ), the always-grinning leader of Textopolis, decides to have Gene wiped out for good. 

Gene manages to escape Smiler’s clutches and with the help of another outcast emoji, the once-popular Hi-5 ( James Corden ), he hits upon a plan to have himself reprogrammed to show only one expression so that he can finally fit in. The only emoji who can do this for him is master hacker Jailbreak ( Anna Faris ), who agrees to help him if he will come with her on a journey to the fabled Cloud, where his ability to change expressions could help her get past the impenetrable firewall protecting it. Their journey across the phone takes the three to a number of different apps and along the way, they learn valuable lessons about Being Yourself and Friendship and the like while being pursued by Smiler’s troops, who have all been outfitted with illegal upgrades to make them extra-powerful. To make matters worse, Alex, having grown increasingly annoyed by the glitches inadvertently caused by Gene’s journey, has made an appointment to have his phone and everything contained within completely erased.

So what wonders lie just beneath our touch screens, anyway? Based on the evidence put forth by “The Emoji Movie,” it is a combination of product placement and corporate synergy. Textopolis itself is an indifferently conceived and executed cityscape populated by any number of familiar emojis, the most famous of which is presumably Poop, who is voiced by none other than Sir Patrick Stewart in one of his less dignified gigs. Once we get outside the walls of Textopolis, we are essentially placed into a series of mini-ads for well-known apps that range from brief detours to the lands of Facebook and YouTube to extended commercials for the Candy Crush and Just Dance games. Since nothing of import goes on during these scenes (or any others, for that matter), I found myself speculating on which ones spent the most money to appear in the film based on the length of their exposure and the praise that they receive from the characters. Based on the available evidence, Dropbox must have been the big spender here—not only is it the all-important gateway to the Cloud but the characters manage to safely hide out from the bad guys there because, and I quote, “they are illegal malware and this app is secure.” Then again, my guess is that the film could have gone into profit solely from taking money from companies eager to keep their apps as far away from this as possible.

The failure of imagination in “The Emoji Movie” is not limited to its depiction of the app world. This is a film that has literally nothing to offer viewers—there are no moments of humor, excitement or insight regarding a culture that considers emojis to be the pinnacle of contemporary communication. The actors go through their lines with such a lack of enthusiasm that they make Krusty the Klown seem focused and committed by comparison. The message about the importance of Being True To Yourself rings exceptionally hollow considering that there is not a single thing here that has not been blatantly taking from other, better films. In fact, the only factor about the screenplay that is remotely surprising is the presence of Mike White , the acclaimed writer of the likes of “ School of Rock ” and “ Beatriz at Dinner ,” as one of the credited screenwriters. How to explain his participation in a project as lame as this? My guess is that, as the most powerful and popular emoji of all, the Poop emoji demanded he be brought in to punch up his dialogue.

“The Emoji Movie” is a demonstration of artistic abdication at its most venal, but will the kids like it? To that question, I offer this observation. This past weekend, I played ersatz uncle by taking two adorable girls of my acquaintance—10-year-old Mamie and 4-year-old Danger (actually, that is her middle name and I swear I am not joking)—to see Hayao Miyazaki ’s 1989 favorite “Kiki’s Delivery Service” on the big screen in a nearly-full theater that contained a lot of families with small children. The kids didn’t know they were seeing a masterpiece but were so caught up in the story and the gorgeous visuals that you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. By comparison, at the screening of “The Emoji Movie” I attended, there were plenty of kids but judging by the shifting in seats, rustling of candy bags and the lack of laughter, they did not seem to be into it at all. “The Emoji Movie” may be as depressing of a film experience as anything to come out this year but if the reaction of the kids that I saw it with is any indication, there may be hope for the future after all.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Film credits.

The Emoji Movie (2017)

T.J. Miller as Gene (voice)

Anna Faris as Jailbreak (voice)

Sofía Vergara as Flamenco Dancer (voice)

Patrick Stewart as Poop (voice)

Jennifer Coolidge as Mary Meh (voice)

James Corden as Hi-5 (voice)

Maya Rudolph as Smiler (voice)

Jake T. Austin as Alex (voice)

Rob Riggle as Ice Cream (voice)

Christina Aguilera as Akiko Glitter (voice)

Steven Wright as Mel Meh (voice)

Thom Bishops as Fist Bump

• Tony Leondis

Writer (story by)

• Eric Siegel
• William J. Caparella
• Patrick Doyle

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The Emoji Movie

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Anthony Leondis

Shim Kyu-hyeok

Shin Kyung-Sun

Kim Seo-young

Lee Jae-hyeon

Sang-deuk Han

The Emoji Movie Review

04 Aug 2017

The Emoji Movie

A film based on emoji must have seemed like a good idea. They're a brand recognised around the world, designed to be colourful and comprehensible across all languages and cultures. It's a built-in hit! And if The Lego Movie can prove a reality-bending, mind-twisting delight, why not a story about humanity's new pictogram alphabet? There is, theoretically, an idea there, however cynical its roots. If only anyone involved in the production had even a basic common vision of the film they wanted to make.

It's bizarre how little this seems to understand smartphones or their users. On one hand, it gets in some (grand)parent pleasing tuts at the young people nowadays and their devotion to their phones. Look at them, hacking and pirating and such. On the other, the film offers fawning depictions of real-life apps, painting them as magical worlds to visit and crowbarring in compliments about their security or functionality. So which is it: civilisation-ending crutch or box of delights?

And there's little to no internal logic. In this reality, deleted games go to your trash like some sort of PC, and internet trolls are malign forces living in pirate apps rather than actual people. YouTube shows live-action film clips - all of them better than anything else in this film - but the owner of the phone where all this takes place, Alex (Jake T.Austin) and all his friends are animated. And teenager Alex plays opera on his Spotify and makes voice calls. Sure, grandad. Nineties cartoon ReBoot showed a more sophisticated understanding of 21st century technology.

Then there's the cast. Choosing TJ Miller, with his cynical slacker persona, as the Meh emoji makes sense. Choosing him as a figure whose entire point is that he is incapable of maintaining a Meh expression because he's so passionate about everything is fundamental miscasting. James Corden's High-5, an entitled and spectacularly stupid manchild, is so annoying he makes Jar Jar Binks look like R2-D2. No one has ever invited a high five less. And Anna Faris' "hacker", Jailbreak, gets some lines offering lip service to feminism and self-determination, but ends up motivated entirely by devotion to some guy she just met so, meh.

There's little to no internal logic.

You might simply ignore the whole thing if this film didn't sully the good name of so many gifted actors. It hopefully goes without saying that Sir Patrick Stewart is wasted as the Poop emoji, but Sofia Vergara is similarly squandered as Flamenca. Maya Rudolph gives it some welly as the sinister Smiler emoji - if you've seen her Dionne Warwick in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt , imagine that turned up to about 15 - but it's still a terrible, underdeveloped character that doesn't get a chance to show the strain of smiling. All. The. Time.

Who is this even for? The broad-strokes storytelling, first-base jokes and dumb characters suggest it's ten year olds and under, as does the Hotel Transylvania short, Puppy , that accompanies it. But the very focus on emojis - which young kids don't really use yet - suggests otherwise. And small kids who start the film delighted by the bright colours and cheery design soon get bored of all the product placement and chase scenes, audibly switching off as the film goes on. It's all so tiresomely over-familiar in its quest for self-expression There is one decent joke about the eggplant emoji, but that's really the height of it.

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Glen Powell’s Amazing 2024 Complicates Top Gun 3 After Maverick's Tom Cruise Replacement Setup

The upcoming 24 movie can finally pay off the show's biggest unfinished jack bauer story, arnold schwarzenegger’s $35m agatha christie thriller remake was supposed to transform his career after back-to-back flops, the emoji movie squanders the talents of its capable voice cast on an animated film that is as cynical in its outlook as it was in its conception..

Gene (T.J. Miller) is a Meh Emoji who lives in Textopolis, a digital city that exists with the smartphone owned by an ordinary human teenager named Alex (Jake T. Austin). While Gene is excited about getting to finally work with the other emojis that populate Alex's phone, he has one big problem: for whatever reason, Gene is capable of expressing more emotions than the single one that he is meant to express. Despite their concerns, Gene's parents Mel (Steven Wright) and Mary Meh (Jennifer Coolidge) do agree to allow their son to join the emoji workforce - only for disaster to strike on Gene's very first day, when he is selected by Alex and panics, messing up Alex's message to the girl that he has a crush on and wrecking the text center where the emojis operate, in the process.

Facing the threat of deletion by bots dispatched by Smiler (Maya Rudolph), a Smiley Emoji and the leader of the text center, Gene flees and ends up crossing paths with Hi-5 (James Corden), a Hand Emoji who has fallen out of popularity. Hi-5, in turn, agrees to take Gene to meet Jailbreak (Anna Faris), a "Hacker Emoji" who can reprogram Gene so that he only expresses the "Meh" emotion. Upon meeting with her, the pair strike a deal with Jailbreak: if Gene and Hi-5 help her to reach the Dropbox (so that she can leave Alex's phone forever), then Jailbreak will "fix" Gene for good. But can they do so before all three of them are sent to the Trash - permanently?

As developed by Sony Pictures Animation (the studio behind the Hotel Transylvania and Smurfs movie franchises),  The Emoji Movie  represents an attempt to take the most popular apps and emojis on your smartphone and create a Pixar-style "secret world", populated by most every non-trademarked IP emoji that has ever been created. Assisting  Emoji Movie co-writer and director Tony Leondis ( Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch , Igor ) in his efforts here is a voice cast composed of several noteworthy comedic actors and celebrities with proven comedy chops; Sir Patrick Stewart himself (lending his voice to the Poop Emoji here) among them.  The Emoji Movie squanders the talents of its capable voice cast on an animated film that is as cynical in its outlook as it was in its conception.

While The Emoji Movie is quick to establish its primary setting of Textopolis as a bustling digital realm in the vein of the arcade from Disney Animation's Wreck-It Ralph , the movie fails to visualize the worlds that exist within your phone with any sort of real imagination or creativity. The animation here has a cheap look in general, relying upon flat colors and uninspired cartoony designs to envision what emojis and the apps that they exist within (and/or travel through) would look like, as objects in a three-dimensional space. Even  The Emoji Movie 's versions of popular apps such as Candy Crush and Just Dance, which feature simple yet bright and playful imagery in the real-world, offer little in the way of dazzling or memorable visuals. Save for the rare exception (see how the movie portrays music and sound effects in Spotify), The Emoji Movie  offers little in the way of eye candy that is more interesting to look at than, well, your actual phone.

Similar to how The Emoji Movie  mimics  Inside Out 's approach to world-building (only in a cheaper fashion), the film weaves together the story thread about Gene's journey within his phone-world with a plot-line about the phone's owner in the real-world, also like what that hit Pixar film did. Unfortunately, the approach backfires here and results in an undercooked hero's journey for Gene and his friends; in the process, painting the phone's young user Alex and his peers at school as emotionally-impaired and incapable of communicating their feelings in any meaningful way without their emojis. Whereas the best Disney and/or Pixar-animated movies bring as much depth to human characters as they do inanimate objects, The Emoji Movie comes off as backwards and shallow in its examination of how people (whatever their age) socialize with one another and express their individuality, in the digital age. For a movie that is all about expressing yourself (a movie that was even originally titled Emoji Movie: Express Yourself ), the film can't even handle that simple, kid-friendly message.

The Emoji Movie , which Leondis co-wrote with Eric Siegel ( Men at Work ) and Mike White ( School of Rock ), also explores the idea of not accepting the role that society has deemed appropriate for you, bringing to mind The LEGO Movie 's take on a similar concept. However, because the various emoji characters in The Emoji Movie  don't actually evolve beyond either flat archetypes or glorified walking puns over the film's (short) runtime, that larger theme is never fully-developed either. Likewise, whereas The LEGO Movie finds a way to add layers of complexity to its own antagonist who is obsessed with social order and everyone being in their place, The Emoji Movie 's similar villain - the relentlessly "cheery" Smiler - isn't afforded any real depth either, nor even an entertaining personality. Despite Maya Rudolph's best efforts to infuse Smiler with some enjoyably manic energy through her vocal delivery of her lines, the character is a one-joke baddie who even most youngsters probably won't find that funny.

T.J. Miller, Anna Faris and James Corden voice, respectively, The Emoji Movie 's protagonist Gene, female lead Jailbreak and comic relief Hi-5, but the actual characters are so cookie-cutter in their design (Gene is the outsider who just wants to fit in, Jailbreak is the "cool girl" who doesn't like to be feminine, and so forth) that having actors with a proven talent for voice acting and broad comedy doesn't make any real difference, when it comes to their quality. Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge as Gene's parents Mel and Mary get a subplot of their own here, but the running joke involving the characters only ever speaking in an unemotional "meh" fashion, as you might imagine, runs out of gas pretty quickly. That said, there is fun to be had in Patrick Stewart delivering (what else?) poop-related puns as the Poop Emoji in a regal and formal manner, but he's in far too little of the film to leave a lasting impression.

As should be clear now, The Emoji Movie  is highly derivative of previous animated movies that anthropomorphized inanimate toys, digital objects and even emotions, but lacks the heart, wit and sense of craftsmanship that made those films successful. It may not arrive as shocking news, but The Emoji Movie ultimately comes across as little more than the crass attempt to cash-in on the popularity of smartphone technology that many thought it would be, when it was first announced. The juicebox crowd is no doubt the demographic most likely to get some joy out of the film's many emoji-related puns and gags, but The Emoji Movie  lacks crossover appeal otherwise. Here's to hoping the inevitable (?) Play-Doh Movie  turns out better.

The Emoji Movie is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It is 78 minutes long and is Rated PG for rude humor.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

The Emoji Movie

When their world is threatened to be deleted, Gene (TJ Miller) ventures off with Hi-5 (James Corden) and Jailbreak (Anna Faris) to save Textopolis and become an emoji with a single expression. Despite being critically panned, The Emoji Movie had a stacked supporting cast, including Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Coolidge, Patrick Stewart, Christina Aguilera, and Sofía Vergara, among others.

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'The Emoji Movie': A poop idea that somehow isn't as poop as it should be

If the The Emoji Movie sounds like a cynical Hollwood 💰-grab dumpster seepage of an idea that deserves your ridicule sight-unseen, then congratulations. You're thinking exactly like my 12-year-old, who could not stop making fun of its very existence after weeks of expensive marketing blitz aimed squarely at him.

Of that, he was all too 🙄.

When I picked the kids up from summer camp to head over to a screening across town this week, my son presented me with this (um, disturbing) work of art, which he'd spent his free-time making that 🌞 afternoon in anticipation:

He and his sisters -- ages 9 and 6 -- were fully amped up for a rip-roaring 😡-watch, having a great time being 👹 in the car, generally just being 🍆🍆🍆. What they didn't know was that the circumstances around this film were setting up to make it so much worse than they could 💭.

Sony rushed this 💩 idea into production because they won a bidding war for the pitch, and no one owns the underlying intellectual-property rights to emoji -- meaning any studio could've tried to cut them off at the pass. It's telling that none did.

The two voice leads are TJ Miller and James Corden. TJ MILLER AND JAMES CORDEN, TALKING FOR AN ENTIRE MOVIE 😣 😖 😫. Writer/director Tony Leondis has exactly zero recognizable credits to his name (unless you count direct-to-video sequel Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch ).

There are just so many reasons this thing should be 😬😬😬.

But somehow, some way, it's not.

It's more ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯?

The Emoji Movie has just enough clever ideas to squeak over the line of acceptable family entertainment, just enough jokes, 💩 or otherwise, to elicit a few laughs. Though it's unfortunately the story of Meh (Miller) and his unsettlingly fleshy hand friend High-Five (Corden), the main female character, a hacker named Jailbreak (Anna Faris), has an arc that turns the worn-out princess story upside down in a way you won't see coming. Her story is actually kind of a 👊🏼. Faris has the best line in the movie -- just her yelling "Mom!" -- that tells a lot of her story in a syllable and also gets the biggest laugh.

And the central theme -- a where-do-I-fit-in tale somewhere between Wreck it Ralph and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer -- is sweet and builds to a message that feels earned: People who are different are our greatest gift. It's almost like they had an idea for a story and fit emoji to it, not the other way around.

Guys. I can't believe I'm saying this but ... The Emoji Movie isn't terrible.

You might even 😃 a little.

Don't get me wrong: Hard though it tries to be, The Emoji Movie is no Lego Movie or Toy Story . The achievement here is its passable-ness; the fact that a collection of mercilessly mockable ideas can cohere into anything is the depths of its 👍.

The hard LOLs are too few and far between; the villainous 😀 ("Smiler," Maya Rudolph) is all-too-obvious; in-real-life action (a boy, Alex, trying to get the girl, Addie) is lifeless and utterly without stakes. The character of 💩 (Patrick Stewart, yes, that one ) is -- can't believe I'm saying this -- totally underused. (Maybe 💩 can get a spinoff? A fling-off? I'm sorry. I'm sorry.)

And the world -- inside Alex's phone -- has some serious logic deficiencies that probably can't be reconciled no matter how you write it, which is a good enough reason not to have made this movie in the first place. (Leondis had once considered having emoji come out into the real 🌎, but his producer made him stick to inside-the-phone, because all electronics, toys, and other amusements must have inner-lives now, stand by for The Fidget Spinner Movie ).

Despite all this, we piled out of the theater in good spirits and with charitable ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ toward a thing we were really looking forward to hating.

In that way, it sort of disappointed us, I suppose. Which in a way is too bad, because ...

... they really, really wanted The Emoji Movie to be total shit.

Josh Dickey is Mashable's Entertainment Editor, leading Mashable's TV, music, gaming and sports reporters as well as writing movie features and reviews.Josh has been the Film Editor at Variety, Entertainment Editor at The Associated Press and Managing Editor at TheWrap.com.A finalist for the Los Angeles Press Club's Best Entertainment Feature in 2015 for "Everyone is Altered: The Secret Hollywood Procedure that Fooled Us for Years," Josh received his BA in Journalism from The University of Minnesota.In between screenings, he can be found skating longboards, shredding guitar and wandering the streets of his beloved downtown Los Angeles.

The Emoji Movie (2017)

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‘the emoji movie’: what the critics are saying.

Early reviews for the film suggest viewers might get more out of the emojis on their smartphones than the ones portrayed on the big screen.

By Lauren Huff

Lauren Huff

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Reviews for the Tony Leondis-directed   Emoji Movie are flooding in, and it’s not looking good for the animated comedy. 

The film follows the adventures of Gene (voiced by Silicon Valley alum T.J. Miller), an emoji with the unusual capability of showing infinite emotions, as he seeks to become a “normal” emoji . 

According to The Hollywood Reporter ‘s John DeFore , any comparison to similar animated fare such as The Lego Movie or Inside Out  isn’t earned here. “Given the right combination of inspiration, intelligence and gifted artists, any dumb thing can be turned into an enjoyable film,” he writes. “But Tony Leondis ‘ The Emoji Movie , a very, very dumb thing, comes nowhere near that magic combination. It is fast and colorful enough to attract young kids, but offers nearly nothing to their parents.”

DeFore  found particular issue with the script, which he calls “weirdly unconvincing.” He adds, “The dialogue is even lamer when the pic’s three scribes depict the life of Alex, the high-school kid who owns the phone Gene inhabits.”

Adds DeFore : “Hell, they can’t even come up with fresh-smelling one-liners about the movie’s resident poop icon.”

While the film is “not always imaginative or digestible,” younger viewers should still be amused, writes Defore . “Even so, few adults in the theater will have a hard time maintaining the flatline , unimpressed expression Gene has such difficulty with,” he concludes.

Calling the film “a severely debased Inside Out that takes place inside of a smartphone,” A.V. Club ‘s Vadim Rizov writes, “The ‘plot’ is really an excuse to hop from one app to another; there are stops in the lands of Candy Crush , WeChat , Just Dance , Instagram , Spotify  and (for the kids!) Dropbox .”

According to Rizov , The Emoji Movie is “an even weaker starting point than Sony Animation’s recent The Angry Birds Movie ” and ultimately, “There was probably never going to be a version of this film that would prove even remotely plausible as a movie someone felt passionately about making for artistic reasons.”

“For a long time, Hollywood has been propagating the idea that the  panderingly ,  trendily  idiotic can be made to seem less so, by polishing it up with bright shiny gloss and enlisting engaging talented performers and writers,”  Glenn Kenny of  The New York Times  explains. He adds, “I can’t be entirely certain of this, but I would say  The  Emoji Movie takes this notion to the outer limits of credibility.”

Emily Yoshida of Vulture  also pulled no punches, calling the film “one of the darkest, most dismaying films I have ever seen, much less one ostensibly made for children.” Yoshida also found issue with the overt product placement in the film, writing, “Yes, the actual IP of The Emoji Movie has nothing to do with the emojis themselves, and everything to do with the apps that have prime placement in the Google AdWords–grade narrative.”

Forbes ‘ Scott MendeIson  was slightly kinder in his review, saying, “I’d be lying if I argued that  The Emoji Movie  is unheard-of cinematic abomination. It’s visually spry, occasionally clever and relatively harmless. Yet it feels afraid of going where it wants to go.”

Mendelson points out the pic’s story acts as “an on-the-nose parable for young gay kids struggling within the closet in a world that will almost certainly cut them down if they slip up or say or do the wrong thing.” However, eventually the film “loses its nerve” when it veers into “a prototypical road movie,” and Mendelson concludes, “Putting aside its value as subtextual fiction,  The Emoji Movie  is surface-level entertaining.”

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Review: ‘The Emoji Movie’ may be meh, but it’s not evil

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There are five stages of grief in preparing to watch “ The Emoji Movie .” The first is denial that this actually exists. The second is anger that now even storytelling has been reduced to those reductive blobs. The third is bargaining that, hey, they made “The Lego Movie” work against all odds so maybe some smart folks actually pulled this off. The fourth is depression that all movies ideas are just doomed to confuse “brands” for “ideas.” And the fifth is acceptance that, yes, of course that’s where we’re headed so let’s pull up a seat and make the most of it.

The good news is “The Emoji Movie,” co-written and directed by Tony Leondis, is not evil. The bad news is it’s just mediocre, or in emoji parlance, simply “meh.”

It does not come close to achieving the joy and wonder of, say, “Toy Story,” ’'Inside Out” or “The Lego Movie” although it appears to borrow heavily from all in its central conceit that anthropomorphized emojis have families and ambitions but also exist solely to serve a particular smart phone owner. “The Emoji Movie” takes us into the world of Alex’s phone — he’s an awkward high school freshman who is stressed out about what to text the girl he has a crush on. His friend advises him that “words are stupid” so he goes for a good old emoji.

Little does he know in the emoji app it’s Gene’s first day of work. Gene (T.J. Miller) is supposed to be the “meh” symbol, but the excitable yellow blob alternates between all emotions and can’t stick to the one he’s supposed to have, like his parents Mary Meh (Jennifer Coolidge) and Mel Meh (Steven Wright), who deadpan lines like “I’m so mad at you right now.” Also, should we be thinking about the implications of aging and procreating emojis? Probably not, but it’s still a particularly weird and uncomfortable idea.

Anyway, Gene is basically the “Divergent” emoji, but there’s no choosing in this town and when he screws up his first time at bat, the sinister Smiler (Maya Rudolph) decides he’s a malfunction and must be deleted. Suddenly Gene is on the run, and hooks up with the past his prime Hi-5 (James Corden) and a hacker emoji Jailbreak (Anna Faris) to try to get into the cloud where they might fix him.

If you’re worried about whether or not this is some big smartphone advertisement, it only kind of is. There’s a whole journey through the Spotify app, and they have to get through a dance competition in the Just Dance app to get where they’re going, and there is a line that seems to have been written by marketing folks about how illegal malware can’t get into the protected DropBox app. Oh and while it’s not mentioned, the Sony-owned Crackle app is always on Alex’s home screen.

Gene might not be much, but Jailbreak is actually a decently conceived character — perhaps because she’s not constrained to being an emoji. It’s actually kind of a metaphor for the movie which shines when it just runs with an idea and not brand-service.

Parents might not learn anything about their kids’ habits on smartphones, and kids won’t get a better understanding of how their smartphone works. But it’s pretty inoffensive on the whole. It doesn’t dare go to the depths that a Pixar rendering might, or lean very far into meta-cleverness. Instead it stays surface level and in that way feels very, very young. It’s about being yourself and the importance of friends and, heck, it’s only 86 minutes long.

Also, the poop jokes are minimal.

“The Emoji Movie,” a Columbia Pictures release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for “rude humor.” Running time: 86 minutes. Two mehs out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG: Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

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Parental Guidance

If your kids insist on watching the emoji movie , here's what you should know.

Yes, there’s a decent chance your kids have seen the colorful, zany ads for The Emoji Movie , and with little else playing for the little ones in movie theaters, you may find yourself standing in line for tickets to see it. Christy offers some advice for those of you who are thinking about doing this, and she also has an alternative to offer. Read on for details.

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Rating:  PG-13, for intense sequences of sci-fi violence, suggestive content and some disturbing images.

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Den of Geek

The Emoji Movie review

Those symbols on your phone come to life in The Emoji Movie. Here's our review...

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There are bad films and then there are terrible films. Terrible films leave the viewer in mental and emotional anguish following a confusing and often offensive couple of hours during which, for some reason, they were unable to leave the cinema or simply hit the stop button on their remote. We’ve all sat through a terrible movie or two (or several) before we start learning how best to avoid them.

Bad films, on the other hand, are only as irksome when it comes to how bored they leave you feeling. Bad films don’t offend or excite – they don’t leave you feeling much of anything. That’s their crime, they fail to move you in any direction and add nothing to your life but time wasted.

The Emoji Movie is one of those bad films, which was actually a pleasant surprise. Expecting to be appalled and angered, it instead left this reviewer no more than a little emotionally numb.

Despite the critical mauling it’s received, then, this is not a terrible film. There are good intentions here buried underneath the cringe-worthy commerce and shoddy storytelling. There’s a good moral that would be celebrated in a different film, and taking young children to see it certainly won’t turn them into mini sociopaths, as some have come close to suggesting.

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The set-up is an obvious and simple one overwhelmed by a needlessly convoluted set of rules and half-arsed worldbuilding – we follow Gene (T.J. Miller), the ‘meh’ son of two ‘meh’ parents who can’t seem to control his little yellow emoji face. He’s just too darn excited to live in Textopolis, and can’t bring himself to pull an indifferent face even when it’s his job to do so.

So when the world’s master, teen boy Alex, interprets Gene’s mistake as a glitch on the phone, evil overlord Smiler (Maya Rudolf) sets out to delete him before they’re all erased for good.

He goes on a mission across the phone to fix his malfunction, taking the teeth-grindingly annoying Hi-5 (James Corden) along for the ride. Much more successful is the character of Jailbreak (Anna Faris), a female hacker with a mysterious secret whose only dream is to make it to the cloud.

As we move along, there are some titter-worthy jokes concerning who and what the emojis are and how they might act should they be personified, and older viewers might get a kick out of jokes concerning emoticons, trolls and the Loser Lounge (where the characters nobody ever uses hang out).

But it’s a wasted opportunity, and the talented voice cast aren’t given nearly enough room to elevate the film any higher than rock bottom. Patrick Stewart as the poo emoji should be hilarious, for example, but really it could have been anyone in the recording booth. Same goes for Sofia Vergara as Flamenca, or Sean Hayes as the devil.

The shameless advertising for apps and services is indeed egregious, with apps such as Facebook, Candy Crush, Just Dance, Spotify and Dropbox all getting more screen time than should really be allowed. At one crucial moment in the film, the Twitter bird (not named as such, for some reason) comes to save the day, and the film is sure to remind us how secure Dropbox is (sorry, OneDrive).

It’s crass and seemingly never-ending, but kids in my screening seemed to enjoy seeing recognisable games and social media translated into huge worlds you can practically live inside. Whether that observation is a sign of the apocalypse I’ll leave up to you.

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But there’s an admirable message at the film’s heart, meaning first and foremost that it has one. Gene is an emoji who quite literally doesn’t fit in the box assigned to him at birth, and he’s so immediately shamed for it that he goes on a dangerous quest to ‘normalise’ himself. Jailbreak, meanwhile, is on her own quest for an identity outside of the what the world has given her permission to be.

In the outside world, Alex’s brief storyline consists of him wanting to impress a girl with the right text message and, although Gene’s initial freakout sabotages his efforts at the start, he eventually embraces his phone’s quirky personality.

These are pretty basic, but they’re messages that we want our kids to learn. Use technology to foster real world connections, don’t just be what other people want you to be, rail against the patriarchy etc. It’s a small thing, but the movie is also pretty racially diverse, from the emoji variations to the kids. The animators didn’t have to do that, after all.

So in brief, I can’t honestly recommend The Emoji Movie to anyone over five but, contrary to popular opinion, you could do a lot worse (and probably have).

The Emoji Movie is in UK cinemas from Friday.

Caroline Preece

‘The Emoji Movie’ Review: There Are No Words

OMG, this animated feature is a POS with no LOLs

You can’t judge a movie by its source material: the much-maligned jukebox musical genre gave us “Rock of Ages,” yes, but it also made “Singin’ in the Rain” possible. And we were all worried about “The Lego Movie” before we saw it. So let us be clear that “The Emoji Movie” is not a soul-crushing disaster simply because its dramatis personae are the range of emotive faces and symbols that live inside your cell phone.

It is a soul-crushing disaster because it lacks humor, 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.

On a story level, it cobbles together pieces of everything from “The Wizard of Oz” to “Smurfs: The Lost Village” (coincidentally, Sony Pictures Animation’s prior release), and thematically it hits a tediously familiar litany of kid-movie messages: Be yourself. People can be more than one thing. Parents should support their children. Candy Crush is super awesome.

OK, that last one is a new feature, since the premise of a movie set entirely inside a smartphone has clearly opened up new potentials of product placement, whether its characters are riding boats down the musical streams of Spotify or walking through other people’s photographic memories in Instagram. As with Sony’s “The Angry Birds Movie,” this is a film that’s shameless about its origins as a pocket doodad; it also resembles that previous film by being completely shrill and stupid.

Within the phone of a hapless high-school freshman named Alex (voiced by Jake T. Austin, “The Fosters”), an emoji named Gene (T.J. Miller) excitedly prepares for his first day on the job in Textopolis. The “excitedly” part is a problem, since Gene is supposed to be a jaded “Meh” emoji, but he can’t stop himself from expressing a variety of emotions on his round yellow tennis-ball face.

[powergridprofile powerrank=”1383″ node=”1068850″ type=”project” path=”http://powergrid.thewrap.com/project/emoji-movie” title=”The Emoji Movie” image=”emoji_movie_0.jpg”]

His professionally underwhelmed parents, played by Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge, worry that his propensity for feelings will get him into trouble, and they’re right: when Alex clicks on him, the scanner registers Gene making a weird nonsense face, which infuriates the perpetually-cheery Smiler (Maya Rudolph), whose face bears a constant grinning rictus even when she’s calling for “malfunction” Gene to be deleted.

Gene’s only hope is to team up with Hi-5 (James Corden) to find Jailbreak (Anna Faris), a hacker who can get them off the phone and into the cloud. Anti-virus bots are eluded and lessons are learned, but to piece together the film’s dreary plotting is to give it more thought than screenwriters Tony Leondis (who also directed), Eric Siegel and a presumably paycheck-collecting Mike White ever did. (And at least one of them will have to live with the fact that he wrote the dreadful pun, “Holy Delete-o!”)

The unanswered questions are legion: Why do the emojis fear the phone reboot, when they’ll presumably return in its new iteration? Are they different from their counterparts in millions of other phones? Why does Gene have parents when most Americans are constantly switching to new and upgraded devices? And are we really to believe that teen boy Alex never uses his eggplant emoji ?

Emotionally, we’re supposed to care about Gene and Jailbreak getting together, even though they’re so muddily conceived that we know he’s pursuing something dumb and her desires are merely vague. On top of that, we’re also supposed to be rooting for Alex to win the affections of classmate Addie (Tati Gabrielle, “The 100”), but of course his courtship all boils down to picking the right emoji to text her. Sorry Cyrano de Bergerac and Abelard and Heloise and Cole Porter and anyone else who’s ever used dumb old words to declare love; you’re nothing without a poop symbol.

The one non-dispiriting aspect of the “Emoji Movie” experience was getting to see “Puppy!”, a new animated short set in the world of “Hotel Transylvania.” When Adam Sandler outclasses your high-concept, high-tech functions, it’s time to switch to a flip phone.

Deadpool & Wolverine: Every Easter Egg, Cameo and Marvel Reference (That We Spotted)

"the proposal.".

Warning: Full spoilers follow for Deadpool & Wolverine.

Deadpool & Wolverine has finally arrived, and it’s packed with more Easter eggs, cameos, and references than you can shake a Time Stick at. Sure, there were some surprises spoiled in the trailers and promos , but the joining of the Fox and Marvel Cinematic Universes saved its biggest jaw-droppers for the big screen.

That includes multiple Wolverines, multiple Deadpools (including, yes, Lady Deadpool), returning actors from the Fox movies… And even one from a movie that never was. But that’s only the beginning of what’s in store in the flick, and with the one-liners dropping a mile a minute, there’s a good chance you missed at least a couple of the references and inside jokes in the film.

That’s where we come in! Below, you’ll find every single reference, Easter egg, and cameo that we could jot down from the new movie. And while we may not have caught every single Deadpool variant – there were 100, according to Nicepool (RIP) – hopefully this can serve as a bit of a checklist for your second, third, or fourth viewing of the film!

Deadpool & Wolverine: Easter Eggs, Cameos and References

Wolverine Variants

Let’s start with Wolverine Variants, established during a montage sequence where Deadpool (also Reynolds) travels the multiverse trying to find a new Wolverine to be the “Anchor Being” for his Earth:

Logan’s Skeleton

Actually, let’s start even further back for the sake of completeness. In the opening sequence, Deadpool digs up the corpse of Logan (Hugh Jackman) from the 2017 movie. He’s rotted down to a little skin and his adamantium skeleton. Deadpool proceeds to use Logan’s skeleton to kill an entire squad of TVA (Time Variance Authority) officers, and wears Logan’s claws. It’s pretty gross!

Okay, back to the montage sequence.

Short King Wolverine

One of the most frequent criticisms of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is that he’s 6 foot 2 inches tall, while Wolverine is about 5 foot 3 inches tall in the comics. The first multiversal Wolverine Deadpool encounters plays off of this, though he’s even shorter than the comic book version.

Weapon Omega

The Wolverine who fights Deadpool in an alley with one hand and a big bushy beard is straight out of Marvel’s classic Age of Apocalypse crossover. First introduced in X-Men: Alpha #1, Weapon Omega is an extreme version of Wolverine from a dark alternate timeline, except the good news for him is he’s together with Jean Grey in this reality. So why is he so mad then? Because he’s The Wolverine, that’s why.

One of Wolverine’s most frequently used aliases in the comics is Patch, where he dresses in a white suit, wears an eyepatch, and goes undercover – and nobody knows it’s Wolverine despite the extremely recognizable hair and attitude. In Deadpool & Wolverine we catch up with him gambling, most likely in Madripoor (as seen in Disney+’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).

Old Man Logan

Despite Logan being a very loose adaptation of the comic book Old Man Logan, guess who we meet here? Old Man Logan. He’s the, er, old Logan wearing the cowboy hat who shoots Deadpool with a shotgun.

Crucified Wolverine on a Bed of Skulls

Not a dish they serve at a fancy restaurant, but in fact a direct reproduction of one of the most famous comic book covers of all time… Marc Silvestri’s cover art from Uncanny X-Men #251 from 1989.

Hulk vs. Wolverine

Wolverine, surprisingly, was first introduced in an issue of The Incredible Hulk. Specifically, as a cameo at the end of The Incredible Hulk #180, before his first full appearance fighting the Green Goliath in Incredible Hulk #181. Here we get to see a riff on that with Wolverine in his brown costume fighting the Hulk. That’s different from the comic book issue, where the yellow and blue-suited Wolverine fought the Hulk – most likely to delineate this Variant from the main version of the character we see in the movie.

Bonus: There’s a quick shot of Hulk reflected in Wolverine’s claws, a shout-out to Todd McFarlane’s cover from 1987’s The Incredible Hulk #340.

The Cavillrine

Unlike the rest of the Wolverine Variants, who are played by Hugh Jackman, this movie introduces a surprise new actor as Wolverine… Henry Cavill, who Deadpool calls The Cavillrine. Pretty much as soon as Cavill announced in late 2022 that he wouldn’t return as Superman, fans started dream-casting him as various MCU characters. And now they finally got their wish! Sort of. There’s also a solid joke where Deadpool tells Cavillrine, "We'll treat you so much better than those a**holes down the street," a reference to Cavill’s treatment by DC and Warner Bros. Discovery when Cavill was told he was coming back as Superman, until James Gunn and Peter Safran took over and plans changed. And just to clarify, there’s no bad blood between DC Studios and Cavill as far as we know – it’s just sort of a bummer about how it all played out!

Deadpool Variants

As mentioned earlier, with 100 Deadpool Variants popping up in the climax of the movie as part of the Deadpool Corps, it’s a guarantee that we missed a few – though some just seemed like Deadpools of different sizes and shapes anyway. With that in mind, we’ll break down the major ones here:

Lady Deadpool

The object of the internet’s insane obsession for months now is voiced by Blake Lively, the IRL wife of Ryan Reynolds, who gets multiple other shout-outs in the movie (including one boner joke about Gossip Girl). We never see the character’s face in the movie, and sorry, Taylor Swift is not playing her. Wanda Wilson was created by Victor Gischler and Rob Liefeld, and introduced in Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth #7.

Dogpool/Mary Puppins

While the internet focused on Lady Deadpool, the actual object of Wade’s affections is indeed a multiversal variant of Wade Wilson, just like how Alligator Loki on Loki is also, uh, Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Dogpool is played by Peggy, named Britain’s Ugliest Dog. The character was first introduced by Gischler and Phillip Bond in Prelude to Deadpool Corps #3.

The very polite floating zombie head version of Deadpool is voiced by Nathan Fillion, and was introduced by Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips in Marvel Zombies #3.

While Kidpool is a kid version of Wade Wilson, the actress playing Kidpool is literally Ryan Reynolds’ kid: Inez Reynolds plays Kidpool, and she’s the daughter of Reynolds and Lively. Kidpool was introduced in the comics by Gischler and Whilce Portacio in Prelude to Deadpool Corps #2. Just don’t confuse Kidpool with Babypool, who also shows up here.

Cowboy Deadpool, aka The Deadpool Kid

Introduced by Gischler and Bong Dazo in Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth #7, Cowboy Deadpool only briefly appears, and is voiced by Matthew McConaughey, which is alright, alright, alright with us.

Just gonna trust IMDb on this one, but dancer Nick Pauley is listed as Dancepool.

Deadpool 2099

Sporting an anime-style look and LED helmet, Wade's daughter Warda Wilson, aka Deadpool 2099 appears during the battle as well.

There are, of course, a lot more we didn’t identify here. Some fans swear they saw an Avengers: Endgame time suit variant, and there’s a good chance everyone from Kingpool to Pandapool (you can figure those ones out) are in there somewhere. Oh, and of course there’s the newest addition, Peterpool (Rob Delaney).

Fox Movies Cameos

Other than Deadpool and Wolverine, a.k.a. the title characters, the Fox movie cameos – many of which are outright supporting roles, and not cameos at all – are the main event here. So let’s break them all down!

Dafne Keen as Laura, a.k.a. X-23

As revealed in a trailer from Marvel, Dafne Keen lied about being in this film while on tour for The Acolyte. But that’s okay (we guess?) because after portraying the younger clone of Wolverine in Logan, she’s back for a key emotional role in the movie, sunglasses and all. And the even better news is Laura survives in Deadpool’s universe, so this may not be the last time we see X-23 on screen.

Jennifer Garner as Elektra

Garner first portrayed the assassin in 2003’s Daredevil, before reprising the role in 2005’s Elektra, which was an out-and-out failure. Also a failure? Garner’s marriage to Daredevil co-star Ben Affleck, which gets a snarky reference when Elektra expresses complete ambivalence about Daredevil dying off-screen in the Void in Deadpool & Wolverine.

Channing Tatum as Gambit

In perhaps the wildest casting in a string of wild cast reveals, Channing Tatum is Gambit, a role he’s been gunning to play since X-Men: The Last Stand. He was originally cast in the role of the Ragin' Cajun before it was cut from the script. And for well over a decade, he’s been trying – and failing – to make a Gambit spinoff film, which was officially killed when Disney bought Fox. That’s why he’s constantly making jokes about nobody meeting him before. But the even funnier joke is that Tatum once put down Taylor Kitsch’s lack of Cajun accent in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, saying that as he was New Orleans raised, he could do a better job. Here, Tatum uses an impenetrable patois that drives even Deadpool crazy. Let’s all apologize to Taylor Kitsch now.

Chris Evans as Johnny Storm/Human Torch

In a great bait and switch, Chris Evans is not playing Captain America; he’s playing Johnny Storm, a.k.a. the Human Torch from 2005’s Fantastic Four and its sequel, 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. He’s also got a very dirty mouth, as you discover if you stay to the end of the credits.

Aaron Stanford as Pyro

Stanford played the flame-controlling mutant in X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand, and returns here as Cassandra Nova’s second-in-command… And eventual betrayer.

Tyler Mane as Sabretooth

Mane returns as Wolverine’s evil opposite, after playing the character in the original X-Men movie. The part was also played by Liev Schrieber in X-Men Origins: Wolverine .

In a brief appearance, the long-tongued Toad returns as part of Cassandra Nova's army. The mutant was played by Ray Park, Darth Maul himself, in the original X-Men movie, where we found out the shocking answer to what happens when a toad is hit by lightning. An uncredited Daniel Medina Ramos plays him here.

Deathstrike

Another brief appearance, but Deathstrike – the one with the long adamantium nails – is back after getting taken out in X2. She is portrayed by Jade Lye. In the 2003 film, she was played by Kelly Hu.

You’re not going to believe this, but another brief appearance! Azazel played a small role in X-Men: First Class, and showed up as a corpse in X-Men: Days of Future Past. He’s the red teleporting demon-looking guy who may or may not be related to Nightcrawler. In First Class he was played by Jason Flemyng -- here, he is portrayed by Eduardo Gago Munoz.

The unstoppable mutant returns here in the same outfit he was wearing in X-Men: The Last Stand, though he’s not played by Vinnie Jones like he was in that movie. He is portrayed by former WWE wrestler Aaron W. Reed. Juggernaut also appeared in Deadpool 2, where he was portrayed by a CGI model of director David Leitch, with Ryan Reynolds’ voice.

X-Men villain Blob (aka Fred Dukes) appears as one of Cassandra Nova's henchmen, played by Mike Waters. The character was previously played by Kevin Durand in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and by Gustav Claude Ouimet in X-Men Apocalypse.

One mutant in the big fight at Nova’s stronghold uses what looks like a lasso/whip made of the same sort of sum totality of her psychic powers that Psylocke uses, though the character was not portrayed by Olivia Munn, as she was in X-Men: Apocalypse. She is played by Ayesha Hussain.

Other Cameos

That covers the major categories, but what about everything else? Here are some other cameos, references, and Easter eggs we caught.

Wesley Snipes as Blade

Wesley Snipes has portrayed the Daywalker three times on screen before Deadpool & Wolverine. He kicked off the modern superhero movie renaissance in 1998 with Blade, continued it with Blade II, and blew it all up in Blade: Trinity, which co-starred none other than Ryan Reynolds. He also played a half-human, half-vampire for an incredible episode of What We Do in the Shadows, though they referred to him as “Wesley” so it sort of doesn’t count. Regardless, he’s back for one more stab of the stake in this new MCU movie, and the script doesn’t leave any joke on the table. Three faves?

• Snipes says he’s the only Blade there ever was, and ever will be, to which Deadpool looks directly to the camera, referencing Mahershala Ali’s MCU project that’s been in development since 2019. Heck, maybe Snipes is right on this one.
• When Blade first meets Deadpool, he says, “I don’t like you,” to which Deadpool replies, “You never did.” If you don’t have an Advanced Degree in Marvel Studies, you probably don’t know that Snipes and Reynolds famously either feuded or just got on each other’s nerves during the filming of Blade: Trinity, depending on who you ask. The reason? Snipes went method as Blade while Reynolds improvised his little heart out to try to make the actor break character.
• In the fight with Cassandra Nova’s (Emma Corrin) troops, Blade says, “Some motherf**kers are still always trying to ice-skate uphill,” which is a callback to the most insane line in movie history, which Blade says when he fights Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff) in the first Blade movie. Reportedly, Snipes came up with the original line one day while eating sour cream chicken . No, we don’t know what he’s talking about, either.

Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan

You probably caught this, too! Favreau, who directed the first two Iron Man movies, guest-stars as the guy gently rejecting Deadpool from the Avengers. Favreau has now played Happy in eight MCU movies, not to mention voicing the character on the animated What If…? Dude loves playing Happy! He’s happy to be Happy!

Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15

Hunter B-15 has been a key character in both seasons of Loki. She started as a soldier questioning who she really was, and now she’s running the TVA – and has the hots for Peter.

Chris Hemsworth as Thor

This barely counts because it’s repurposed footage from Thor: The Dark World, but Thor shows up on one of the screens in the TVA, cradling Deadpool’s broken body and crying. The implication is this will happen in Secret Wars, but TBD.

Chris Evans as Captain America

This counts even less! We see a ton of footage of Evans as Cap, presumably to set up the Human Torch swerve later on.

Ollie Palmer

If you watch the FX series Welcome to Wrexham, you know Reynolds co-owns Wrexham AFC, a football team in Wales. Palmer, a striker for the team, pops up briefly as a bar patron.

Rob McElhenney

Reynolds co-owns Wrexham AFC with McElhenney. And as teased on an episode of Welcome to Wrexham, the It’s Always Sunny star shows up briefly as a TVA soldier.

Stan Lee has appeared in every Deadpool movie so far, and in fact, he appears in this one too – at least in spirit. In the fight with the Deadpool Corps, as Wolverine and Deadpool slash their way through a bus full of multiversal Deadpools, you can briefly glimpse a cartoon Stan Lee head, in an ad on the side of the bus, for some sort of cleaning company.

Do You Think Deadpool & Wolverine can reignite the MCU?

Other Easter Eggs and References

• Deadpool says Logan wears the costume because he gained weight “since the divorce,” which is a reference to Jackman’s IRL divorce. It’s also a set-up for the reveal of Jackman’s still-rippling abs by the end of the movie.
• The convoy led by Pyro has a Fantasticar from Fantastic Four, a Fantastic Four logo flag, an ice cream truck from Moon Knight, and the Red Skull’s car from Captain America: The First Avenger.
• Crashed in the Void is a helicarrier, and what looks like Thanos’s Q-ships from Infinity War and Endgame. You also probably caught the 20th Century Fox logo, half-buried in the sand. And you definitely couldn't miss Antman/Giant-Man's oversized skeleton and suit doubling as the base, as well as Deadpool referencing Antman actor Paul Rudd by name.
• In Happy’s office are a bunch of keepsakes, including the half-finished Cap shield from the first Iron Man movie.
• Deadpool does Spider-Man thwips while he’s driving in the car with Wolverine, which is probably the most they can use/reference Spider-Man in this movie for [spooky voice] contractual reasons.
• Spotted in the Void: Captain America’s shield from the Nick Spencer comics, an old-fashioned winged Thor helmet, and a stone wall in the shape of Wanda Maximoff’s head, just to really dig into Scarlet Witch fans who don’t like that she was flattened by a mountain in Multiverse of Madness.
• Connecting back to the Loki TV show, the Guardian of the Void, Alioth, features prominently.
• X-Men namechecks include Professor X (a lot), Cyclops, Storm, Jean Grey, Beast, and more.
• Deadpool makes a joke about Van Wilder (which starred Reynolds) to Nicepool, to which Nicepool says he can break the fourth wall too, looks at the audience, and says, “The Proposal,” another Reynolds movie.
• After being told The Punisher died in the Void trying to attack Cassandra Nova, Deadpool says, “Which one? There’s been a lot of them.” And indeed, multiple actors have played Frank Castle on screen, including Dolph Lundgren, Thomas Jane, Ray Stevenson, and currently Jon Bernthal.
• The shop behind Deadpool and Wolverine in the battle against the Deadpool army is called "Liefeld's Just the Feet" -- a reference to Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld.

So that’s everything we caught in Deadpool & Wolverine in terms of cameos, Easter eggs, and just funny referential stuff. What did we miss? What was your favorite? Let’s discuss in the comments!

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An Olympics Scene Draws Scorn. Did It Really Parody ‘The Last Supper’?

Some church leaders and politicians have condemned the performance from the opening ceremony for mocking Christianity. Art historians are divided.

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By Yan Zhuang

A performance during the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony on Friday has drawn criticism from church leaders and conservative politicians for a perceived likeness to Leonardo da Vinci’s depiction of a biblical scene in “The Last Supper,” with some calling it a “mockery” of Christianity.

The event’s planners and organizers have denied that the sequence was inspired by “The Last Supper,” or that it intended to mock or offend.

In the performance broadcast during the ceremony, a woman wearing a silver, halo-like headdress stood at the center of a long table, with drag queens posing on either side of her. Later, at the same table, a giant cloche lifted, revealing a man, nearly naked and painted blue, on a dinner plate surrounded by fruit. He broke into a song as, behind him, the drag queens danced.

The tableaux drew condemnation among people who saw the images as a parody of “The Last Supper,” the New Testament scene depicted in da Vinci’s painting by the same name. The French Bishops’ Conference, which represents the country’s Catholic bishops, said in a statement that the opening ceremony included “scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity,” and an influential American Catholic, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, called it a “gross mockery.”

The performance at the opening ceremony, which took place on and along the Seine on Friday, also prompted a Mississippi-based telecommunications provider, C Spire, to announce that it would pull its advertisements from Olympics broadcasts. Speaker Mike Johnson described the scene as “shocking and insulting to Christian people.”

The opening ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly, said at the Games’ daily news conference on Saturday that the event was not meant to “be subversive, or shock people, or mock people.” On Sunday, Anne Descamps, the Paris 2024 spokeswoman, said at the daily news conference, “If people have taken any offense, we are, of course, really, really sorry.”

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