(l t r) Jailbreak, Gene and H-5 with Poop peeking out of the edge of frame spam is not millions of different messages sent daily but a single individual entity. What does it mean for emojis to have children? Are there whole families of baby smiley faces, sad face emojis etc out there? And if there is only one emoji to choose from what do all the others do? What happens when an emoji is sent to another phone – the confused Gene exists in Alex’s phone, so when Gene is sent and appears in Addie’s phone, does that mean he has been instantly cloned and appears in her world too? Does it not seem odd to the creatures living in this world that the places they live, things they eat are also shaped like their friends and comrades and would that not seem offputting? It is also interesting to see that terms applied to abstract groups of things like Spam, Trojan Horses and Trolls are actual living entities as opposed to annoying things sent by human agents ie.

The main problem is that the script – co-written by Mike White, the actor known for Chuck & Buck (2000) and more recently as director of Brad’s Status (2017) – feels rushed and not properly thought out.

You get the impression that The Emoji Movie was conceived in terms of a pitch somewhere between Wreck-It Ralph (2012) – the secret lives of characters inside a videogame – and Inside Out (2015). For reasons known only to the people behind the film, The Emoji Movie speculates that these graphic characters are entities that have lives of their own beneath the screen of the phone. For those who have no idea what I am talking about, emojis are the expressive little icons featuring everything from smiley faces to hearts, animals, cars, houses and thumbs up and so on that you can insert into text messages. The Emoji Movie is a textbook example of a film having been quickly slung together to capitalise on a fad of the moment – namely, emojis.

Director Tony Leondis had previously co-directed Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005) and then went solo for Igor (2008). Sony Pictures Animation have been on the rise in the animation stakes in recent years with the likes of Monster House (2006), Open Season (2006), Surf’s Up (2007), Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009), The Smurfs (2011), the big hit of Hotel Transylvania (2012) and sequels, Peter Rabbit (2018), The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021), Vivo (2021) and Wish Dragon (2021), as well as their collaborations with Aardman Animation, Arthur Christmas (2011) and The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012).

Emoji movie production company