THE EMOJI MOVIE (dir. Tony Leondis)

For me, when I heard at the 2016 CinemaCon festival that Sony Animation had won a bidding war, for a reported 7 figures, to acquire to the rights to an Emoji Movie, I wondered if we had actually entered a parallel universe where legitimate premises for films have cease to exist. Two years later, and a modest $50 million budget injected, The Emoji Movie rushes into cinemas garnering some of the most vitriolic reviews of the year.

If you saw the trailer, you’ll notice that Leondis’ animation borrows some of the same ideas as Disney tentpoles films like Inside Out or Wreck it Ralph, but shamefully in this case, it’s much more maligned with it’s signature “poo” emoji than any of these hugely superior films.

Our titular emoji is “meh”, voiced by comedian T.J Miller, who exits in a world labelled as Textpolis, a large ecosystem inside the phone of a high-school teenager, Alex. Finally given the chance to “get scanned”, meh’s obligation is to perch himself in a large grid amongst other emojis, and when commanded by the owner of the phone, get scanned by a large robot which relays his emotion back to the phone. Even if alarm bells aren’t ringing that this is some of the laziest writing in all of animated film history, just keep reading.

Meh’s parents don’t think he is ready for the big responsibility, and as in this film just like in the real world, they turn out to be correct. At the vital moment he messes up his one job and faces deletion by his shred boss Smiler (Maya Rudolph).

The plot than transpires that Meh, teaming up with an unwanted group of fellow emojis Hi-5 and Hacker – voiced by James Corden and Anna Farris, must venture inside the phones apps to re-programme Meh. If this doesn’t bore you into submission already, than the sheer amount of shameful product placement surely will. Apps like Spotify, DropBox, Facebook, Instagram and others (which require subscription fees) are shoehorned into a children’s animated film in an attempt to get your money rather than service the plot.

To make matters worse, The Emoji Movie is unbelievably ugly to look at. Not a single second of animation is worth the money invested in this complete waste of time. After a while, all of the characters become actively irritating and you spend your time wishing you watching anything else.

Rating; 0/5