‘The Emoji Movie’ Vying for Title of Worst-Reviewed Film of 2017
The Emoji Movie premiered this past weekend, earning an estimated $25.6 million at the domestic box office — good for second place, behind Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. That may be a disappointing number for Sony Pictures, given that, with no other family-friendly film still doing serious business in theaters, it had the kids-centric market mostly to itself. And while sometimes kids’ movies get the rep of being review-proof, there may be a point when critical reaction could have an effect: The Emoji Movie is shaping up as one of the worst-reviewed releases of 2017.
As Screencrush noted on Friday, The Emoji Movie at that point had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 0% — and that was after 28 reviews had already been published online. Since then things have improved ever so slightly for the animated feature, with its Rotten Tomatoes score up to a whopping 8% thanks to the arrival of three positive write-ups. While that’s hardly a report card worth celebrating, it does mean that The Emoji Movie is now only the second-worst-reviewed film of the year, ahead of Rings (6% “fresh”). But considering that there’s still plenty of time for more scathing critiques to come, we’re not sure it won’t ultimately wrestle away that dubious honor from the horror sequel by December.
But if you venture over to Metacritic, The Emoji Movie is throttling its competition for the lousy-wide-release crown, boasting a score of only 10, good for dead last for 2017 (Rings, by comparison, rates a 25). So no matter how you cut it, Sony’s based-on-a-smartphone-avatar adventure is certainly one of a handful of movies that critics have truly, unequivocally disliked this year.
Check out Yahoo Movies’ summary of the weekend’s box office action, with Dunkirk defending its crown:
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