The Emoji Movie review – the end of human civilisation as we know it

Smartphones take centre-stage is this hideously dumbed-down offering

This is what happens when a film studio decides not to bother with making films good enough to prise the audience from their smartphones and just embraces the fact that mobile devices are part of the movie-viewing experience for a swath of the younger audience. And it's horrible. A bleak, witless, creative wasteland of a movie that plays out like Pixar's Inside Out dumbed down for morons. I don't think I'm overstating things here when I say that The Emoji Movie feels like a harbinger for the end of human civilisation as we know it. A strident palette of candy-coloured empty calories and poop jokes and a cynical message about accepting yourself had me searching for an emoji showing a dispirited film critic hanging from a noose fashioned from a phone-charger cable.