The Emoji Movie Review: 3 Ups & 7 Downs

4. The Animation Is Incredibly Dull

So the script sucks, but what about the look of the film? Well, $50 million was spent on cobbling it together, and it certainly looks like an animated movie released from a major studio, but it's absolutely on the lower end in terms of imagination.

From the uninspired character designs through to the rather pat attempt to make a tangible setting out of "Textopolis", it's a visually unremarkable effort that basically does the bare minimum to bring audiences in and little else.

There's no real attempt to realise the mechanics of the emojis on-screen in a clever way as The Lego Movie did so well with its plastic blocks, and so it simply ends up looking like another bland Sony Pictures Animation joint. Shocking.