The Emoji Movie Parent Guide

Looking for a film that leaves you feeling… well… meh? The Emoji Movie could be the perfect fit if you are truly wanting to throw money toward a highly lackluster experience. Locked within teen Alex’s (voice of Jake T. Austin) smartphone is a hive of animated emojis. (If you’re thinking, “emo-what?, turn around and head for another movie.) Their community is led by Smiler (voice of Maya Rudolph).

Smiler’s modus operandi is to ensure all emojis are well behaved and ready to display their designated expression if, and when, Alex decides to pull up the keyboard of graphic icons on his phone and reveal his innermost thoughts – particularly to his crush, Addie (voice of Tati Gabrielle). However, there’s one emoji that is having a difficult time marching to the beat of one drum.

Gene (voice of T.J. Miller) may be the offspring of two meh parents (voices of Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge), but he has more feelings bottled up inside of him than he can possibly keep under control. On his first big day in the center of the emoji grid (for those of you as old as me, think Hollywood Squares), Alex picks the indifferent “meh” face to represent his current attitude. The spotlight leaves Gene with stage fright and the outcome is a malfunction of indescribable confusion. The momentous fall from fame leaves Gene’s parents disgraced and, even more distressing, motivates Smiler to forever ban the rouge signifier from entering the emoji stage again.

Embarking on what becomes a road trip within a smartphone, Gene teams up with his buddy Hi-5 (voice of James Corden) who tells him there are pirates in the phone that can “fix” his problem. With Smiler’s police-bots on their tail, the pair become a trio after meeting up with Jailbreak (voice of Anna Faris), a rebellious hacker with the skill to hardwire Gene into eternal apathy.

Engaging Jailbreak in their cause isn’t easy, because she is distracted by her own issues. Upset with the two-dimensional representation of women on smartphones (“the first female emojis were either brides or princesses”, she exclaims) she convinces Meh and Hi-5 to join her and seek freedom in the cloud – a place where you can be whatever you want. However, it also means they must leave the oppressive boundaries of the smartphone behind.

The Emoji Movie may offer a clean ride in the usual content categories, but it does pose some thematic concerns. To begin, it’s a blatant pusher of product sponsorship in cinema. Our heroes ride music streams in Spotify, take flight on a giant Twitter bird, use dance moves in Just Dance to escape threatening bots, discover their sweet tooth in Candy Crush and find security within Dropbox. There’s also guest appearances from YouTube and Instagram. The plot occasionally interrupts the commercials.

Yet perhaps the biggest issue with The Emoji Movie is that its creator yearned for it to be something more than just entertainment. Ironically, his underlying message gets bogged down trying to manipulate his young audience rather than allowing them to feel emotion. Tony Leondis states in an interview that as a gay man he hoped to express his childhood frustration of being excluded “in a world that expects you to be one thing.” His intended purpose instead exudes elitist superiority. Gene is the only emoji that gets to be anything he wants and too bad if it isn’t his “special” right to do so even if it casts a cynical cloud over the rest of the populace who are literally pigeonholed into their emotional cubes.

If that wasn’t enough agenda to squeeze into this 90-minute romp, we also have Jailbreak’s foray into feminism. Literally breaking through a glass ceiling in one hardly vague visual metaphor, those little ones in the audience who adore Disney princesses may leave feeling less than human.

Finally, this animation encourages tweens and teens to continue expressing their deepest emotions through text messages. While the animated humans only make up a small percentage of this movie’s story, am I really the only one thinking, “Put down your phone kid, and just go talk to her!”?

The more I consider The Emoji Movie the more emoji I become.

About author

Rod Gustafson

Rod Gustafson has worked in various media industries since 1977. He founded Parent Previews in 1993, and today continues to write and broadcast the reviews in newspapers, on radio and (of course) on the Internet. His efforts also include writing and researching media in all its forms and observing how it effects society and culture. He and his wife Donna have four children.