Kids’ cash-in won’t give you a smiley face
EMOJIS are those daft little symbols used on mobile phones, to which I was introduced by my children.
Mind you, when I use them in text messages they still seem vaguely bemused, as if their old dad is trying too hard to be down with the kids.
But I didn’t hate this movie because it falls headlong into the generation gap. I hated it because it embodies just about everything I loathe most in certain children’s films.
It is not only derivative (Pixar’s Inside Out and Toy Story are the obvious inspirations), but also exploitative, cynical, soulless and boring. Maybe it takes one to know one, but it tries way, way too hard to be down with the kids.
It tells the story of an adolescent ‘meh’ emoji called Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller) who lives in Textopolis, a teeming city of symbols buried deep
in the smartphone of a teenager called Alex.
If you’re not in the know, ‘meh’ is meant to represent apathy. But this one, to the horror of his dutiful ‘meh’ parents, keeps expressing far too much enthusiasm for life, and is duly expelled by the ruler of Textopolis, a sinister smiley emoji (Maya Rudolph).
A decent voice cast also includes James Corden as a high-five and Patrick Stewart as a pile of dog ‘poop’, not to mention Christina Aguilera and Sofia Vergara as dancer emojis.
But really the film is irredeemable from the moment you recognise it as a transparent exercise in cashing in on the intense relationship some (make that most) children have with their phones.
Of course, plenty of films try to cash in on all kinds of relationships, but rarely is it done quite as brazenly as this.
Director Tony Leondis and his writing team leave no digital stone unturned in the search for technology gags, yielding up a sneezing virus and a flaming firewall.
I t’s Patrick Stewart’s symbol, though, that most eloquently sums up the whole sorry project.