THE EMOJI MOVIE

Gene (T.J. Miller, ‘Deadpool’) is a “meh”, only he doesn’t feel very meh-like. In fact, he has the unique ability to be all the emoji faces. On his first day on the job his nerves get the better of him and he screws up, thereby putting all of Textopolis and the rest of the phone in danger of being deleted when their user Alex takes his phone to be fixed. It turns out Gene is a malfunction. When bots are sent out to delete Gene in order to save the rest of the emojis, he teams up with the unfavourable Hi-5 (James Corden, ‘Trolls’) and Jailbreak (Anna Faris, TV’s ‘Mom’) to escape to the cloud to fix himself and return good as new.

‘The Emoji Movie’ suffers from fatal bad timing, weak jokes and a lack of understanding of their product by the filmmakers - they think the eggplant is an unused emoji!! They also seem to believe that emojis are a form of communication exclusive to teenagers, and as characters they don’t look too kindly on the emojis themselves. There’s a half-arsed morality thrown in about being yourself and the value of friends, but it kind of gets lost among the product placement and tongue-in-cheek look at apps. ‘The Emoji Movie’ has three screenwriters to its credit including Mike White (‘School of Rock’). I think he and the rest of the gang were too busy patting themselves on the back for a “good” pun that they forgot to put any genuine heart, soul or even laughs into this meh-vie.