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| For the record those are voxels, not pixels. Literally unwatchable. |
Directed by Chris Columbus
Produced by Adam Sandler, Chris Columbus, Mark Radcliffe, Allen Covert
Written by Tim Herlihy, Timothy Dowling, Story by Tim Herlihy
Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad, Brian Cox
Budget: $88M
Adam Sandler's a weird guy to write about because he's obviously talented on some level, but he's grown complacent. It's kind of the same problem that's taken hold of Seth MacFarlane in that he makes enough money that nobody will say no to him. It happened to Stephen King as well, and in every case it's never a good thing.
We start in 1982 with a bunch of kid actors playing Sandler, Gad, Dinklage, and James and none of the child actors are particularly good. Sandler's character is apparently some sort of video game wiz but he fails at beating Dinklage at Donkey Kong, by which I mean he comes in second. Dan Aykroyd shows up for about thirty seconds so his vodka can get pitched later in the movie, and we learn this world video game championship is going to be put into some sort of digital time capsule and shot off into space.
Jump forward. Kevin James is the President of the United States. Adam Sandler is a Nerd Patrol installation guy. A military base in Guam is attacked. Sandler is called to a house where he makes inappropriate passes at an obviously grieving Michelle Monaghan, and already this movie is a piece of trash. Sandler gets called into the White House where James informs him of the base attack, and it turns out aliens intercepted the video game tapes and thought it was a declaration of war.
If this sounds disjointed, it's because Tim Herlihy is a hack.
Sandler teams up with Josh Gad and the Taj Mahal is attacked. Brian Cox and Sean Bean don't like our main characters because they're nerds. After losing the first two battles (Galaga and Arkanoid), the team fights back and wins Centipede. In order to win, they recruit Dinklage, who's been in prison for the past few years. There's a Pac-Man sequence, some really unearned romantic scenes between Sandler and Monaghan, and a big dumb fight at the end where Sandler saves the day and gets the girl, because of course he does.
Where to begin?
Maybe with some more Adam Sandler talk. Since I watched Ridiculous Six last year Sandler's been in the midst of his four-film deal with Netflix, which led to The Do-Over (coming soon to this blog). It seems he's found his new home, because with Netflix he doesn't have to bother with what the critics think or what box office returns are; so long as people keep watching, they'll keep pushing out this content. Which of course means Sandler can continue his streak of not trying while rolling around on his cocaine mountain.
Not that I can really blame him at this point. The man has found a formula that works, and if all it takes is his integrity as an artist, who cares that he's free to sit back and make dumb, candy movies with his buddies?
Because that's essentially what Pixels is. It's candy, and while it might look good, you shouldn't watch too much because it'll kill you.
The Tolerable
Considering 2015 was the last year he did actual studio work, this movie got a competent director in Chris Columbus. The man has an eye for his work, and most of this film is at least shot in a way that wasn't offensive. There are a few good sequences, notably the Centipede fight (though once Sandler and Gad take the spotlight the logic goes out the window) and the final scenes set during the big battle on earth are just chaotic enough to not detract from the look of things.
Hell, even the pixel aliens look good. Even up close it's obvious there was some care put into the appearance of Q*Bert, PacMan, and the others. Every so often in these movies the sheer amount of CGI on screen at once drops the quality, but even when the screen is blaring like an arcade it's not overwhelming.
Finally, the actual actors in this movie put in fine performances. Michelle Monaghan is wasted but she delivers. Peter Dinklage couldn't give two shits about what he's been given and it's obvious he's having the time of his life. Josh Gad, despite the fact he's playing a stereotypical man-child, actually lends some comedic timing to the movie that's sorely lacking from the rest of the cast, even if his lines are the most predictable sort of Sandler fare. Of course, Sandler isn't credited as a writer on this film, but to say he didn't have some influence would be disingenuous.
The Awful
First off, this movie feels really cynical. Sandler's character isn't likeable on pretty much any level. Within the first few minutes of meeting him we see him make several really weird comments towards Monaghan's character which would be grounds for any reasonable person to call Not Best Buy to ask who thought it would be a good idea to employ this guy. For example, we learn that her husband was caught cheating on her with the 19 year old Sinnamon, and his first reaction when he sees her is to comment about how hot she is, when he expected her to be one of those women who was hot in high school but got fat. Later, when she's crying and drinking wine in her closet he joins her and tries to snag a kiss and his first reaction to her rejection is to question whether she would have kissed him if he was a billionaire. Man, I think it's more like she's a Lieutenant Colonel in the US military and you're a 50 year old Not Best Buy Nerd Brigade guy with no skills outside video games.
Hell, until the obligatory second-act reversal he treats her (and most other people) like trash. When he's wandering around the White House (with no security, no clearance, and no real reason to be there) he spends most of his time hurling half-formed insults at people based on their appearances. It's mean-spirited, and coming from someone of Sandler's age it should be embarrassing.
Of course, Monaghan isn't the only woman who's criminally underutilized in this movie. Jane Krakowski is here as the First Lady, and she doesn't do anything other than tickle Kevin James and add the occasional concerned aside to a scene. She has comedic chops and she's there only to serve as the president's arm-lady.
But what's worse is Ashley Benson's character, Lady Lisa. At the start of the movie we see Gad's character obsessing over the character who seems like a very tame Red Sonja knock-off, to the point where he creates flip-books of the two in various domestic situations. During the big fight towards the end Gad is confronted by an alien taking the form of Lady Lisa, who...for some reason transforms from a pixel person to a human? Then she tries to kill Gad, he confesses his love for her, and she switches sides. It takes about that long, too.
Also, she has literally no lines. This isn't a use of the word for the purpose of exaggeration, I mean she literally doesn't speak throughout the movie. At the end she is literally a trophy for Gad (seriously, the movie uses the term trophy). At a certain point you'd think someone would look at the script and wonder what happened.
But enough about the weird boy's club stuff. The logic in this movie breaks down the second it needs to for a cheap laugh. There's a big point made throughout about how the games follow patterns, and analyzing and memorizing the patterns will let you win the game...except for when certain Centipedes or other pixel creatures decide to break their patterns for no reason. There's a "joke" about one of the centipedes going off and doing aerobics in an old woman's apartment. This is immediately after Sandler shouts several times that there's a pattern.
The movie is riddled with these kind of leaps in logic, general mean-spirited humor, and lack of any real clever use of the video game conceit. There is a single joke, where the Tetris pieces fall down and eliminate a skyscraper, and that's it (it's also taken directly from the original short film).
Verdict
I spent most of this movie angry and left it feeling sad. Don't waste your time.
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