Sandler’s Pixels a Game Gone Wrong
The world is under attack from aliens. Misinterpreting messages sent into orbit during the 1980s, they translate images of kids taking part in video game competitions as a declaration of war. In the 30-plus years since then they have been planning and designing their response, challenging the citizens of Earth to a series of contests based entirely upon those very games. What used to cost a quarter at the local arcade is now a gigantic threat to all humankind, PAC-MAN, Galaga, Centipede, Space Invaders and all the rest of their brethren descending from the skies to vanquish all who stand against them.
PHOTO: Columbia Pictures / Sony
Sitting U.S. President Will Cooper (Kevin James) has a plan. His best friend, Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler), was a video game champion back in 1982, and he thinks this is just the type of guy who could lead Earth’s forces to victory. Alongside fellow arcade gladiators Ludlow Lamonsoff (Josh Gad) and Eddie “The Fire Blaster” Plant (Peter Dinklage), and assisted by U.S. military tech expert Lt. Col. Violet Van Patten (Michelle Monaghan), this is the group that will be the planet’s first line of defense. Laying it all on the line, each of them must put past regrets behind while embracing this second shot to be a champion, failure to do so leading to the type of Armageddon that can’t be undone by slipping another quarter into the gaming console.
I’ve never seen Patrick Jean’s short film upon which this latest Adam Sandler endeavor Pixels is based so I cannot say just how closely Tim Herlihy (Bedtime Stories) and Timothy Dowling’s (This Means War) screenplay follows the template for all this interstellar comedic nonsense it originally laid forth. What I can say is that the idea, at its core, at its base, is a solid one, this whole Ghostbusters meets Independence Day silliness having a moderately charming allure that’s undeniable.
At least, charming to those of us old enough who remember plugging quarters into various machines at the neighborhood arcade, as I can’t imagine I’m alone in fantasizing what it would be like if Donkey Kong came to life or PAC-MAN was running wild trying to avoid Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde inside my family’s living room. There’s something to the ideas fueling this pixilated mayhem (and even my typical aversion to Sandler’s idea of funny business couldn’t change my curiosity as far as that was concerned) and as such it’s difficult to not hold at least a small modicum of hope this film could have turned out to be something of a moderate summertime surprise.
The good news is that, in large part thanks to the steady, confidently assured hand of director Chris Columbus (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), Pixels is far from being a bad movie. On the other side of the equation, just because that’s so that just as equally does not make it a good one. Sadly, this big budget special effects driven comedy just exists more than it does anything else, achieving a form of bland, barely interesting mediocrity that’s not terrible enough to be risible, yet nowhere near imaginative enough to make up for its readily apparent shortcomings.
It’s hard not to wonder what might have been had Sandler not gotten involved. He’s too in on the joke, too willing to call attention to what is going on, never going with the flow and letting a sense of awe or discovery take hold. More, he’s shockingly dull, delivering a performance that’s so lifeless it’s as if reviews and audience reactions to recent endeavors, The Cobbler, Men, Women & Children and Blended, films where you could make a solid case he was actually trying to do something interesting, have left him shell-shocked and unwilling to take risks. The veteran funnyman isn’t so much terrible as he is uncaring, transforming right in front of our eyes into a plastic male mannequin going through the motions and little, if anything, else.
PHOTO: Columbia Pictures / Sony
Shame, really, because by and large the remainder of the picture – save maybe James, who does admittedly look a little out of his element as the President – is beautifully cast, especially as Dinklage is concerned. Dinklage dominates scenes with a rapscallion relish that’s sublime, charming his way through one-liners and innuendos with ghoulish, masculine glee. He also plays things perfectly straight, never winking to the audience he’s in on the gag, and as such his reactions to what is happening always feel on point even when the rest of the picture around him is anything but.
Columbus does what he can, and while a lot of the film’s central set pieces are beautifully planned and executed, a mid-movie centerpiece involving PAC-MAN and a quartet of ghostly Mini Coopers particularly so, none of them amaze in ways that stick. Heck, a climactic face-off against Donkey Kong is a particular letdown, while a jam-packed assault on Washington, DC by a cavalcade of ‘80s video game icons come to life is too frenetic and all over the place to be anything akin to memorable. No, all Pixels really has going for it is that premise, which at the end of the day isn’t enough to waste a single hard-earned quarter on, not a one.
Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: 2 (out of 4)
