Sony Pictures’ The Emoji Movie may deal with the life and times of ‘emoticons’, but it fails to engage the audience like Pixar’s Inside Out, where the ‘emotions’ kept the audience involved by being truthful and closer to reality. The idea of playing with ‘Emojis’ was a good one, but it was too lengthy for an animated film and the idea went to waste, just like that.

The film follows the story of Gene (voiced by TJ Miller) who is a ‘Meh’ Emoji and lives in Textopolis that is a digital city inside Alex’s phone. Gene has more than one expression, a quality that lands him in trouble, and he is labelled a Malfunction, sentenced to be deleted (from the phone) but escapes before the sentence could be carried.

With the help of Hi-5 (James Corden), he searches for Jailbreak (Anna Faris), the only person who could restore him to being a Meh. Together, they go from one application to another, escaping the clutches of Smiler’s Bots and facing a deadline as Alex wants his phone formatted so he can start over. Interesting, isn’t it?

The movie suggests that if you are true to yourself, keep friends close and know the importance of teamwork, then nothing is impossible. However, the way this message has been delivered is too mature for kids who might not even know most of the Emojis that are shown on screen.

Do the Emojis manage to make peace with Smiler (Maya Rudolph) or do Alex’s problems disappear after the format. You will have to find out yourself! All I can tell you is that there are a lot of things in your phone that come to life in this movie, such as the Firewall application, Dropbox and YouTube as well as emoticons like Spam, Troll and others.

The chase may drag a little but don’t worry, good things come to those who don’t sleep during animated films.

The movie is rated PG for some rude humour.

Published in Dawn, Young World August 19th, 2017