Critic Reviews

The Emoji Movie proves unable to provide even a modicum of content capable of capturing or retaining the attention of an adult. Nap time.

Before the jacked-up antics get to be too much, director Tony Leondis and co-writers Erich Siegel and Mike White get in a few satiric licks at a technology we've all come to call home.

Despite the talents and charisma of its voice cast, The Emoji Movie fails to deliver on any of its intended messages or themes, with a final act that goes back on everything it had originally been trying to say.

There have been worse ideas, but in this case the execution isn’t good enough to bring the notion of an emoji movie to funky, surprising life.

If not always imaginative or digestible, the look of the settings and characters should keep kids awake for 86 minutes; and if the trick that eventually saves the day makes very little sense to critical moviegoers, at least it's cutely frantic eye candy.

The most distressing aspect about The Emoji Movie is that a spectacle this self-evidently soulless no longer feels like a new low. It doesn’t even leave a dent.

There was probably never going to be a version of this film that would prove even remotely plausible as a movie someone felt passionately about making for artistic reasons; as far as expanding on smartphone-related IP, this is an even weaker starting point than Sony Animation’s recent The Angry Birds Movie.

The Emoji Movie could not be more meh.

But a cluster of screenwriters found barely a single laugh in this wayward tale of a “Meh” face emoji in search of reprogramming. Not a one.

The Emoji Movie is a force of insidious evil, a film that feels as if it was dashed off by an uninspired advertising executive.