REVIEW: The Emoji Movie is a chilling text message sent to you all the way from cartoon hell

REVIEW: The Emoji Movie proves you can turn just about anything into a feature film. All achievements end right there.

COME back, The Angry Birds Movie, you 2016 cartoon calamity!

Not only is all forgiven.

You are a paragon of taste, restraint and higher learning when compared to this year’s app-trocity leaping from phone screen to big screen.

An Emoji waving her hand at a whole lot of Emojis. Audience shaking fists at screen not pictured.

Yes, The Emoji Movie is here, and yes, it is a feature film dramatising the wacky exploits of those playful pictograms through which much of the world communicates.

The most convenient way to review this soulless, cynical and strikingly unfunny animated comedy would be to simply print one big Poop Emoji.

However, the filmmakers went ahead and made that fragrant fellow a key character in the story — and somehow persuaded Patrick Stewart to voice him — so that is out of the question.

Is there an Emoji of someone setting fire to a cinema? That would be perfect.

Meh walks around Textopolis, looking for another sponsor’s logo to stand near.

The story unfolds — and then tears itself immediately to pieces — in the city of Textopolis, which is located inside a child’s mobile phone.

(In one scene, that child utters “words aren’t cool,” a line of dialogue guaranteed to take a year off your reading age simply by hearing it said out loud.)

It is here we meet Meh (voiced by T.J. Miller), an Emoji marked for deletion because he is too cheerful to convey indifference.

Meh just might be the most exceptionally dire lead character to have ever fronted an animated comedy.

He really exists only to give lethargic shout-outs to digital brands who have paid for that exalted privilege. As for those advertisers who shelled out a little less, Meh and his fellow Emojis will hang out near the relevant logo.

Q. Unless a 2018 release date is announced for The Fidget Spinner Movie, surely this is as low as kids’ entertainment can go?

A. Loudly Crying Face Emoji.

Do not look too closely at this picture. Or its contents will begin appearing in your dreams ... and your nightmares.

THE EMOJI MOVIE (G)

Rating: no stars (0 out of 5)

Director: Tony Leonidis (Igor)

Starring: the voices of T.J. Miller, Patrick Stewart, James Corden, Anna Faris.

Sometimes, there are just no words ...

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