Thank God I hated Pixels

Liking The Emoji Movie last year had a profound impact on my identity as a cinephile. When everyone else reserved nothing but their choicest vitriol for the movie, it made me question whether I truly lacked the critical faculties to differentiate between something with a legitimate heart and creative spark, and a moronic, cynical attempt to make some money by stealing somebody else’s ideas. I’d probably have to see the movie a second time to determine which one it is, but I dare not. At some point I will.

It’s dampened some of my enthusiasm for going back and seeing other movies widely heralded as turds from recent years. If I liked these movies too, I’d start to wonder if I were capable of rendering sound judgments about movies in general.

But Sunday night I faced that fear and watched one with some obvious surface similarities to The Emoji Movie: the Adam Sandler-starring, Chris Columbus-directed 2015 flop Pixels.

And I’m glad to say that I hated it.

“Hate” might be a strong word as the movie did not make me angry. But I did not laugh once, and I grimaced numerous times. “Srongly disliked” might be a better word as I decided that the movie warranted 1.5 stars rather than 1 or .5. You don’t truly “hate” a movie unless you give it one star or lower. But 1.5 stars is no kind of endorsement of Pixels, when you contrast it with the four stars (!) I handed out to Emoji Movie.

And boy did not liking Pixels feel good.

You shouldn’t go into a movie thinking you won’t like it or wanting not to like it, as that’s not giving the movie a fair shake. It’s also conforming to your preconceived bias, which is part of the very hivethink I loathe that led so many people not to like The Emoji Movie. And in fact I do feel like I went in with an open mind about possibly finding a surprisingly charming film that was widely misunderstood, like The Emoji Movie. Despite my acknowledged trepidations.

But it didn’t take long for me to realize that Pixels was DOA, flat in concept and execution, and unfunny. I was with it through the opening flashback sequence in which a young version of Sandler’s character is seen mastering numerous 1982 arcade games while Cheap Trick plays on the soundtrack. Promising enough. But the moment we thudded into the present day, with Sandler looking even older and more haggard than I think he was supposed to, the movie lost whatever potential liveliness it had. Learning that Kevin James was playing THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, a dim-witted childhood buddy of Sandler’s who can’t really read, pretty much squelched any hope. Even the arrival of one of our most charming actresses, Michelle Monaghan, and a true cinematic/TV treasure, Peter Dinklage, could not salvage the movie.

A paragraph’s worth of qualitative analysis of Pixels is all I care to give it at the moment, because that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is to breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t like all bad things. And that’s a good thing.

I did think it was funny to compare Pixels with a more recent cultural touchstone, Ready Player One. The similarities are rather striking – striking enough that I considered titling this post “Ready Pixels One.” Both movies deal with how an intimate/obsessive knowledge of 1980s culture proves key to saving the world. Knowing the right moves on a video game is actually key to both movies, though RPO expands that to include memorization of movies and other pop culture relics. Both heroes are men who devoted themselves to learning those things, though in the case of Pixels, it’s because he loved them, whereas it’s more a means to end in RPO (with love following as a byproduct). And both movies are ridiculous, with RPO perhaps only seeming more valuable because of its superior execution.

Now that I know I can see bad movies for what they are, maybe I’ll go on a little binge.

Or, maybe I’ll cleanse my pallet from Pixels with something good.

The enduring need for children's entertainment

When I was at Target on Tuesday for a little Christmas shopping, I happened to notice The Emoji Movie for sale on DVD. It came out here in September, so December is a logical time for the DVD release. No big whoop.

However, then I was at the Hoyts Highpoint on Wednesday for a little Daddy’s Home 2 and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and I also saw The Emoji Movie available there. It was still, somehow, clinging to a nominal theatrical release, playing exactly once per day in a pre-noon showing.

Which goes to show just how much Australian parents require a cinematic babysitter for their kids.

Now granted, that’s not a suggestion that Australians rely excessively on screens to entertain their children. If anything, I’d say Australian parents are probably a bit better about that than their American counterparts. It’s really more of a commentary on Australian theater chains and their mission to cater to all demographics at all times.

I’ll note that at the time I saw that “there are no more showings today for this feature – please contact staff to enquire about tomorrow’s showings,” the last showing of The Emoji Movie, period, had already played. This was Wednesday at midnight when Star Wars was about to premiere, and lo and behold, Ferdinand also opened on Thursday. As soon as The Emoji Movie was no longer needed, it dutifully shuffled off into oblivion.

What I find interesting about this is that it represents a wholly different mentality from the U.S. Theatrical windows in the U.S. seem to be based a lot more on cold, hard dollars and cents. If a movie is earning, it stays, and if there’s nothing but violent action movies playing at a particular theater, meaning there’s nothing for the kids to watch, well then that’s just too bad for them. All money is equal, and the U.S. theaters don’t care whether it’s the violent action movies or the family friendly movies that are doing the earning.

Not so, or not quite so, in Australia. I’d imagine that the holy dollar continues to be the largest motivating factor, but a something-for-everyone mentality also plays a role in what stays and what goes. It’s been a weird year for animation, with not a lot of really compelling features and some big gaps between their releases. It may not be that The Emoji Movie was particularly performing for Hoyts, it’s just there was nothing to take its place. In Australia, that matters. In the U.S., not so much.

It also seems a bit or a lot less likely for American theater chains to keep around a movie that will play in only one time slot each day. Perhaps the fees paid by cinemas for the right to show movies are structured differently here, but I get the feeling you can’t keep around a niche movie in the U.S. because the cost is prohibitively high. When you have the right to show a movie, that means you have the right to show it 20 times a day if you want. You'd pay the same price to show it only once. Not so in Australia, or at least potentially not so. (What do I know? I’m not looking this stuff up.)

Something about seeing The Emoji Movie still available warmed my heart; it felt like an endorsement of my own perspective on the movie. I saw it with my younger son at this same theater back before Halloween, in that same pre-noon screening slot, which even then was the only time it was screening (if I remember correctly). I think it was even before 11, actually. I think I liked it more than he did, but we both liked it, making us two of the only people in the world who can claim that. The fact that it played at this theater for like three months feels like a small bit of evidence that we’re not crazy.

Or, maybe just evidence that Australian theater owners are.

A critic out of sync

If being more and more out of sync with how others view the core aspects of your industry is a sign that you are slipping at your job, then I may be slipping as a film critic.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) is just the latest example of how I am at odds with nearly the entire critical community on a prominent film.

Simply put, I thought this movie was shit. Noah Baumbach has been on a steady but increasingly steep decline since While We're Young, which has some very strong elements but a wrap-up that I thought was beneath him, and disturbingly conventional in its plotting and execution. I thought Mistress America was a misfire from start to finish, but has a couple moments that keep me from out-and-out hating it. And now we've landed on The Meyerowitz Stories, which I pretty much hated. But just as a favor to Mr. Baumbach, who has made many films I've loved, I refrained from giving it only a single star on Letterboxd. I went with 1.5.

If you look at Metacritic, though, this movie has a 79, which includes 38 positive reviews and only one mixed review.

How can other people see such a different movie to what I see when they watch this?

The dialogue is shamefully expository and stilted. The movie never starts with any kind of thesis what it's about, so when my wife and I had to pause it at the 13-minute mark to deal with our children, we asked ourselves before resuming "What's even going on here?" The directing is some of the worst I've seen lately, which is even stranger as people have been talking about how Adam Sandler deserves an Oscar nomination for this film (if he's eligible, which goes back to yesterday's post on whether Netflix films get theatrical releases). Sandler did not commit any obvious gaffes, but award-worthy? Come on. Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller and Emma Thompson are more obvious victims of the bad directing, and what was the point of putting Adam Driver in exactly one scene playing a character whose function was indeterminable? There are absurd set pieces that go nowhere and relate to nothing, and Baumbach also employs this technique where he cuts in the middle of a line of dialogue, apparently just to jar us and make us think he's doing something interesting. In short, this is a poorly constructed film with very few merits.

But, 38 positive reviews and one mixed review.

When digging into the distribution of star ratings on Letterboxd, I found that it has 327 five star ratings, 1,042 4.5 star ratings, 3,161 four star ratings, 2,116 3.5 star ratings and 1,116 three star ratings. In short, 92% of its ratings could be construed as positive. It drops way off from there. I'm one of only 44 people who gave it 1.5 stars, and I was almost one of only 37 people to give it one star. (I guess I would have been one of 38 in that case.)

So, I'm out of sync with the rank and file cinephiles as well.

This wouldn't concern me quite as much if this had not also happened two other times within the past two weeks. And they weren't both instances of films I hated. One was one I really liked (dare I say loved?), that others hated.

The other one I hated came last Sunday, when I also issued 1.5 stars to Brigsby Bear, a precious bit of fakery that didn't make me laugh or feel anything. The distribution of positivity for this movie on Metacritic is strikingly similar. This one musters only a 68 to Meyerowitz' 79, but it has 25 reviews marked as positive, eight as mixed, and none negative. So if I were someone whose critical opinions were measured on Metacritic, I would be the only negative review for both of these movies.

Then there's the movie I really liked, which I am daring to tell you about a second time on this blog if you missed the first time: The Emoji Movie. You can just about flip the distribution of star ratings for this movie as for Meyerowitz. My rating of four stars (!) marks me as one of only 40 who gave the movie that star rating. That's compared to the 1,170 who gave it a half star.

Maybe The Emoji Movie isn't the best example. You have to expect a critic to be an outlier on certain movies. But taken in accumulation with some of my other recent judgments, it worries me.

I guess it goes back to how differently I felt about Dunkirk than most people. At least I had the good sense to cross the two-star threshold with Dunkirk. I gave it two stars. And I may watch it again before the end of the year to see how I was wrong. Watch this space.

Perhaps the most alarming thing is that I keep on having to write this post. I don't have a good way to search how many times I've written on this topic over the years, but when I came up with the title for this post, I noticed it was similar to one I'd written back in February of 2010. I called that post "A year out of sync," and commented on how much I felt I'd differed from others on the films of 2009. Was this starting way back then?

The fact that I've now divorced it from a specific slate of films, and broadened the indictment to focus on myself, is perhaps even more alarming than the thing I just called "the most alarming."

But buck up, young Vance. Just three years ago your #1 film was the film that won best picture, and two years ago your #1 film was the one that won best animated feature. Last year your #1 was the film that seemed like a shoe-in to win best foreign language film, until it didn't. You've also had times when you've worried your choices were too conventional.

I suppose every critic has these times of feeling out of sync, and they are both good and bad things depending on the circumstances. You don't want to lose your credibility by recommending things people hate and shunning things people love, but if you're always predictable and fall in line, then that's no fun either. Really, you just have to be you and give your honest opinions, and hope people value them.

I'm sure by the end of the year I will have a top ten list that looks kind of like they always do -- six or seven that are widely beloved, and three or four "weird" choices that speak more to my personal tastes, or what happens to have struck me as particularly distinctive in a given year.

The Emoji Movie won't be making that cut, at least.

Reviewing an idea, and following a herd

The Emoji Movie has a 12 on Metacritic.

I'll let that sink in a moment.

12.

Twelve.

T-W-E-L-V-E.

That's not just bad. That's historically bad. That's "only the most brainless horror movies and tone-deaf Christian movies" bad. That bad.

The thing is, The Emoji Movie is not actually bad.

I was as surprised as anyone to discover this. I finally saw it yesterday at a 10 a.m. showing at Hoyts Highpoint. Why was I able to see a 10 a.m. showing on a Wednesday morning? Well, because yesterday was my wife's final day out of town on her most recent (but much shorter) work-related trip, and we (uh, she) decided that our youngest needed a day at home to break up five straight days in daycare. When asked to take off work for this reason, I usually put up a token opposition on the grounds of lost money/the hassle of requesting time off from my boss ... but then I remember that a day off from work can be a fun thing if done right. And "done right" can include going to the movies. I can use my critics card at Hoyts any weekday before 5, and I figured another $10 for my three-year-old would make it a pretty good morning excursion. It was actually $16 -- for a three-year-old -- but I will rant about that another time.

He chose The Emoji Movie over Captain Underpants, an outcome I was secretly glad about and subtly pushed for. I didn't think either movie would be good, but I deemed The Emoji Movie the more "culturally significant" of the two of them -- "significant" as in "everyone is talking about how horrible it is," and I wanted to join the conversation.

But it's not horrible. Far from it. I was on board from the first moments through the final. In fact, I pulled out my balls and put my reputation on the line and have given this film FOUR STARS on Letterboxd.

I'm as shocked as you are. But I can't lie to myself. The Emoji Movie combines elements of Inside Out and Wreck-It Ralph to give us something inventive that stays consistent with the logic of its own world, is fun, and has a surprising amount of heart.

Of course, if you are taking the negative angle on it you'd call it a rip-off of those movies, but I don't know why that has to be the case. It borrows some of the logic behind those movies, but it executes it differently enough to exist plenty fine as its own distinct entity.

So why the 12?

I've got some thoughts on that.

This was one of those movies that most critics pre-judged. I told you last week that I wrote my first paragraph of my Geostorm review before having seen it, since that first paragraph wasn't a substantive comment on the film itself, but rather a consideration of the recent career of its director (who turned out not to be its director, necessitating a rewrite). Well, I can see how a number of critics might have written the first paragraph of their Emoji Movie review, at least in their heads, before walking into the theater, based not substantively on the movie itself, but on the industry that allowed it to exist in the first place. They were predisposed to the movie being terrible -- and let what they saw complete the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because just on a basic idea level, The Emoji Movie feels like a major insult to our intelligence. It's the type of movie whose very existence prompted these exact words in 73% of people upon hearing about it: "Has Hollywood sunk so low that they are now making a movie about emojis?" The answer is, of course, "Duh." If Hollywood has not sunk lower, it's only because Hollywood hasn't thought of a way to do that yet.

But you don't review ideas. You review films. So what if Hollywood sunk so low as to make a movie about emojis. Now that the movie exists, review that movie -- don't review the system that birthed it into existence.

And if you review The Emoji Movie, you will find a somewhat formulaic movie -- The Lego Movie is another inspiration -- that nonetheless manages to tweak the formulas enough to make it distinctive. Or distinctive enough, anyway. And so what if it is a lesser facsimile of other movies I've loved. Some people go to the movies simply to see the same movie over and over again, when you boil down their instincts to the most basic level. Anytime you've told someone "If you liked Movie A, you will probably like Movie B," you've basically accused them of craving similar things when they go to the movies. If you liked (or loved, as I did) Inside Out or Wreck-It Ralph or The Lego Movie, why wouldn't you crave something similar?

Now of course, the x factor in any discussion like this is the quality of the execution. But The Emoji Movie passes most if not all of the bars here as well. The vocal cast is enjoyable and engaging, with the likable T.J. Miller playing Gene, the "meh" emojji, and Steven Wright perfectly cast as his dad. Was there ever anyone whose delivery has more perfectly encapsulated the emotion of "meh"? Jennifer Coolidge plays his wife, not such an obvious casting as Wright, but an effective one, as it turns out. James Corden gives it his all as a high five emoji, and less recognizable but still useful is Anna Faris as a hacker. In a great bit of stunt casting, you also have Patrick Stewart as the poop emoji. See, the people who graded this idea rather than this movie objected to Patrick Stewart lowering himself to play a poop emoji, in principle. They didn't wait to see if it worked.

I wouldn't call the writing a laugh a minute, but I did laugh -- a number of times. And the animation is perfectly in keeping with industry standard. It looks good. In fact, I like how it looks a lot better than many of Dreamworks' recent efforts.

I don't want to go completely in the bag for The Emoji Movie, but maybe I should. I should own that four stars rather than trying to retract some of my enthusiasm and whittle it down to a 3.5. Maybe the world needs a few positive voices on The Emoji Movie, and if I have to shout louder and more stridently to make the impact of my opinion felt, maybe I should do that.

Because no one else is. I mean, no one. I am very much of the opinion that a few stinking turds (voiced by Patrick Stewart, perhaps) were dropped by the first critics who saw this, and a wave of subsequent reviewers came in poisoned and ready to add to the flow of vitriol. I mean, who wants to be the one critic who likes this abomination? Leave that to some other fool.

Some fool like me.

I think some people are capable of saying a movie is bad simply because it is derivative. I won't notice a movie is "bad," by their definition, if it produces enjoyment in me. I think some people actively shun their feelings of enjoyment because they are opposed philosophically to what a movie is doing or how it is doing it. For me, enjoyment is enjoyment and it's as simple as that.

Maybe my credibility with you will suffer. I don't care. I call a spade a spade and a poop emoji a poop emoji, and The Emoji Movie is not a poop emoji.

I challenge you to watch it -- fresh, unpoisoned, giving a full share of your open mind.

And then tell me if you think -- you really, really think -- it's down there with brainless horror movies and tone-deaf Christian movies.

And if you do ... well, poop to you.