Review | Film review: The Emoji Movie is a shameless, witless piece of poop
Failed jokes, poor execution and over-the-top product placement combine to create a real stinker of a film that even Patrick Stewart can’t save
1/5 stars
Banal and uninteresting, the film will even fail to impress the very young children it’s targeting – they won’t know enough about the workings of a phone, or the history of the internet, to understand what’s going on. Parents, meanwhile, will be irritated by the constant slew of product placement which includes Spotify, Dropbox and many other digital companies.
It might have worked if the execution wasn’t so appalling. In the world of Textopolis, each emoji must develop a single side of their personality to do their job – smiley icons must never look “meh”, for instance. The problem with Gene (T.J. Miller) is that he’s so emotional, he can’t get his face to stick in one position.
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After Gene pulls a weird face in a text, the phone’s owner decides to delete everything on the phone and start anew. This, though, will wipe out the inhabitants of Textopolis, so Gene and some emoji friends, including Hi-5 (James Corden), journey through the phone’s inner architecture to fix the problem first.