Watching The Emoji Movie, I honestly couldn’t comprehend the amount of vitriol dished up for what is essentially a pretty funny animated film for kids.

Apparently the world needed a whipping boy and The Emoji Movie came along at just the right time for people to unload extra harshly on this relatively sweet piece of fluff.

Alex is your typical teenager who spends more time on his phone than he should.

His buddy suggests he send an Emoji to a girl he likes but when he presses the button to send a “Meh” face, Gene, the Emoji character tasked with showing this face freaks out and triggers a meltdown that threatens to wipe out all the creatures living inside the phone.

Gene teams up with Hi-5 (James Corden) and Jailbreak (Anna Faris) and they embark on a perilous journey through the phones apps to reach the cloud in the hope of preventing the device from getting wiped, and them along with it.

The film’s director has spoken about how it is a very personal story for him, and the themes of trying to fix oneself to fit in with others is a universal one.

The film delivers more than enough laughs for audiences of all ages, and combined with vivid animation, most kids will be spellbound for the duration of the movie.

My 9 year old daughter can’t wait to see it. I’d probably even go and see it again with her, as there are plenty of scenes that made me laugh out loud.

3 Stars.