Grade: 2/5
What happens when aliens send the video games that we launched into space back to kill us? We must rely on Adam Sandler to save us, for some reason.
“Pixels” tells the story of childhood friends Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler) and Will “Chewy” Cooper (Kevin James) joining together to fight off the horde of Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Centipede that are sent down as a series of challenges for ownership of the planet. If Earth loses, the rulers of the opposing planet say they will destroy the Earth.
Those games were featured in a competition that Brenner and Cooper played in as teenagers. Footage from the competition was included in the space capsule launched into space to explain pop culture in the ’80s to beings that had the means to reach the capsule.
The first 30 to 45 minutes of the movie feel very disjointed. Chewy is president of the United States. Did I mention he cannot read? Forty-something-year-old Brenner is working as a Geek Squad rip-off nerd with his life in shambles after losing his wife to an affair. On an assignment to install an insanely expensive TV and video game setup for a child, whose mother, Violet Van Patten (Michelle Monoghan) also is left alone due to an affair, Brenner finds himself falling for Violet. If this sounds overly complex and confusing, it is. Does it help progress the story? Nope.
While Brenner and Van Patten are drinking wine out of a sippy-cup in her closet and she’s crying out her emotions, the Space Invaders make their first move by attacking a military base in Guam. The aliens declare the event a victory and take a random soldier as a trophy. Chewy calls in Brenner as the resident video game expert and decides to wait until the aliens attack and destroy the Taj Mahal to make a move because his approval ratings are through the floor. After another loss, the Earth only as one loss left before total destruction.
A lot of this movie is overly complex, and the many details added do little to help the audience understand anything happening. Adam Sandler is phoning in his performance, as expected. For a movie that’s intended for children, I was legitimately surprised it’s rated PG-13 considering how much explicit language it has.
I will give “Pixels” the little credit it is due. The special effects are actually kind of cool, and the Pac-Man vs. ghosts segment is very entertaining. But for everything the movie does right, it falls flat much more frequently and intensely than the high points. Many parts of the movie are borderline disgusting, and as someone who actually likes crude humor, I was nearly appalled at how nasty parts of the movie got.
As a summer movie, “Pixels” does its job well enough if you can overlook the glaring badness throughout the movie. Even though the movie appears to be a family movie, I highly recommend leaving the children at home for this one. What should have been a children’s movie is actually somewhere in limbo between a mature movie and a children’s movie, but it does a bad job at reaching either.
I was expecting the movie to be much worse than it was, but by no means is the movie good. Do not go see this movie in theaters, but I would recommend renting it after it comes out if you want a light film.
Riley Katz is a 20-year-old mass communication junior from New Orleans. You can reach him on Twitter @rkatz94.