The Emoji Movie — inventive

The Emoji Movie has been taken to the cleaners by American critics, but I’d have thought a light sponging quite enough. Sony’s animated comedy about cyber-symbols is not that bad. Nor is it stained excessively with product placement, despite name-checks for some well-known apps. The hero is a young “Meh” emoji, born to be a blasé-expressioned yellow face, with a jaded-fatigue sigh implied for all occasions. But he feels too many emotions. Joy, laughter, anger . . .  He cannot function properly in his role. His mission accordingly: to fit in with others or else make them fit in with him.

If you’re over 50, you may not know what an emoji is. I was in that club two days ago. If I can chuckle now, though, so can anyone as Meh (voice of T.J. Miller) goes on an adventure-journey through smartphone “levels”, right up to the Cloud. He’s accompanied by two fellow emojis, Hi-5 (James Corden), a talking hand, and the prettily burbling Jailbreak (Anna Faris), a hacker.

Some of the gags fizzle. A few set pieces go to pieces. Occasionally it’s as if The Lego Movie is reaching out a long, friendly arm to Inside Out and falling into the chasm between. But the film is inventive too. There’s a hilarious do-or-die password attempt scene (we’ve all been there), and watch out for Smiler (Maya Rudolph), the best character. She’s an upbeat alpha female with a permanent smile and a laughter-toned “happy” voice. She’s the kind of woman you’ve met as a PR greeter: the kind who will carry on smiling and spraying charm while she tells you your hope of a meeting/appointment/deal/whatever is dead in the water and so are you.