To quote a friend
You know a movie is going to be outrageous when you have Kevin James as the president.’, and that is what Pixels is – outrageous.
Yet, sadly its quality runs out fast – but before we address that, let’s talk about the story.
The premise of the movie is that back in 1982, the USA sent a capsule containing various media footages and video games into space, in hopes that extraterrestrials will come into contact with the capsule and contact humanity back. Fast-forward to the present time and it is seen that aliens did come into contact with the capsule, but mistook the video game footage as a belligerent and wage war on humanity in the form of attacks that take the shape of the retro games.
Galaga attacks on a military base, giant pong sliders attacking and decimating the Taj Mahal. Thus, President Will Cooper (Kevin James) calls upon his friend Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler) – an aged retro video game legend – in order to calculate the counter attacks on the aliens. And obviously, somewhere between, Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad come along for the ride, as well as Michelle Monaghan as the only female lead to add some romantic interest.
The movie is good, but that’s all it is. As mentioned earlier, it has its outrageous moments but that barrel only rolls (see what I did there) for the first 40 minutes, and then the remainder of the movie is a cornucopia of banal humor and predictable plot turns. It’s truly annoying when a movie clusters all its prime content in the first half just to reel audiences in only to drop the ball immediately after.
Also, it was good to hear such a lovely soundtrack from the movie; much of the soundtrack is composed of songs from the 80’s. Josh Gad’s character was continuously funny and really differentiated him from the other characters. However, where Josh Gad rose, Peter Dinklage fell – you know a character is badly written when the flashback version of the character is more interesting and funny.
Dinklage’s character had his moments but that is all he was given: moments – and this is surprising from a calibre actor like that of Peter Dinklage. The biggest highlights of the movie were the superb graphics; they were really well done in 3D, and watching PAC-MAN, Centipede or Donkey Kong really brought back nostalgic memories from my retro years.
Honestly, what can one expect from an Adam Sandler movie? By far this is one of his better movies in the last decade. Yet, I found myself questioning my admiration for this flick – was it one that sprung from objectivity or from a really low standard I set for myself? I expect very little from Adam Sandler movies, so I find myself slowly coming to the terms with the latter.
At the end of the day, the Pixels achieves what it sets out to do: be funny. But sadly, it isn’t memorable and has no replay value. There isn’t much depth to this movie as clearly seen from the lack of a decent word count on this review, and it was disappointing to see that some of the funniest scenes were already shown in the trailer; if they were held back from being aired that way, they would have given the movie way more brownie points.
In summary, Pixels is worth the watch to retro gaming fans and non-gamers alike – as long as you set your standards low.
