S

The movie starts with a school filling with students, who are constantly texting and have their phones during class. Within these texts are emojis, and the movie switches to the lives of these emojis being used. The main character Gene (T.J. Miller), is preparing to be a “meh” emoji but runs into conflicts with the original emoji, Smiler (Maya Rudolph). Gene and his two friends, Hi-5 (James Corden) and Jailbreak (Anna Faris), attempt to escape Smiler and her attacks. The three resolve Gene’s conflict and learn a valuable lesson about being yourself and not forcing yourself to be someone you’re not.

Young children will learn a great life lesson from watching this movie, while being entertained with the creative animation and cartoon-style characters. The emotions that many students feel today, such as a boy trying to impress a girl, are shown very well, as he tries to use the right emoji when texting her when they aren’t together. The movie is also really easy to relate to since the emojis are very humanlike. I would recommend this movie to young children. For high school kids, it’s the perfect movie to take a younger sibling or niece or nephew to. For this daily connection to our lives, I give “The Emoji Movie” five out of five cardinal heads.