'The Emoji Movie' may be meh, but it could be worse

There are five stages of grief in preparing to watch “The Emoji Movie.” The first is denial that this actually exists. The second is anger that even storytelling has been reduced to those reductive blobs. The third is bargaining that, hey, they made “The Lego Movie” work so maybe some smart folks actually pulled this off. The fourth is depression that movies confuse “brands” for “ideas.” And the fifth is acceptance that, yes, of course that's where we're headed so let's make the most of it.

The good news is “The Emoji Movie,” co-written and directed by Tony Leondis, is not evil. The bad news is it's just mediocre, or in emoji parlance, simply “meh.” It does not come close to the joy and wonder of “Toy Story” or “Inside Out,” although it appears to borrow the central conceit that anthropomorphized emojis have families and ambitions.

“The Emoji Movie” takes us into the world of Alex's phone. He's an awkward high school freshman who is stressed out about what to text a girl he has a crush on. His friend advises him that “words are stupid” so he goes for a good old emoji. Little does he know in the emoji app it's Gene's first day of work. Gene (T.J. Miller) is supposed to be the “meh” symbol, but the excitable yellow blob alternates between emotions and can't stick to the one he's supposed to have.

When Gene messes up, the sinister Smiler (Maya Rudolph) decides he must be deleted. Suddenly Gene is on the run, and hooks up with the past-his-prime Hi-5 (James Corden) and a hacker emoji Jailbreak (Anna Faris) to try to get into the cloud where they might fix him.

If you're worried about whether this is some big smartphone advertisement, it only kind of is. “The Emoji Movie” is pretty inoffensive.