THE EMOJI MOVIE

THIS computer-animated adventure, set inside a teenager’s mobile phone, hacks the source code from Inside Out and Zootopia to invent a metropolis where emojis live, perpetually at the beck and call of the user.

It’s an intriguing premise but director Tony Leondis, who co-wrote the script with Eric Siegel and Mike White, delivers a horribly misjudged journey of self-discovery that can be summed up with one emoji: poop.

The tightly coiled, chocolate brown turd makes fleeting appearances in Leondis’ picture, and is lifelessly voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart.

Gene (voiced by TJ Miller) is a Meh emoji, blessed with an unnaturally large repertoire of facial expressions.

He heads to Textopolis where he will punctuate text messages sent by shy human teen Alex (Jake T Austin) to his crush Addie (Tati Gabrielle).

Psychotic system supervisor Smiler (Maya Rudolph) oversees transmissions and doesn’t tolerate workers who deviate from their calling. When Gene strikes an awkward facial expression in one of Alex’s texts, the teenager decides to correct the glitch by erasing the contents of his phone.

Smiler despatches robot underlings to eliminate Gene but he escapes with the help of Hi-5 (James Corden), who suggests they seek out a hacker emoji called Jailbreak (Anna Faris) to correct Gene’s lifelong malfunction.

“I can be reprogrammed and finally I can be the Meh I was meh to be!” gushes Gene as the fugitives leap from app to app, including a dance challenge hosted by Akiko Glitter (Christina Aguilera).

The Emoji Movie is 86 minutes devoid of imagination and creativity.

The plot is nonsensical (lots of the facial emojis in Textopolis reflect contrary feelings but only Gene is labelled a malfunction) and the script fails to mine wit from the relentless product placement of popular apps.

The impending destruction of Gene and his kin via a reboot to Alex’s handset can’t happen soon enough.