Pixels Movie Review (Spoiler Free)
Giant arcade games coming to life, gamers set up as heroes & an alien invasion that threatens Earth. Pixels sounds like an amazing movie for every game freak out there, but there is one problem with it; Adam Sandler is in this movie!
Genre: Comedy / Sci-Fi
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage, Brian Cox, Jane Krakowski & Sean Bean.
Run Time: 106 min.
US Release: 24 July 2015
UK Release: 12 August 2015
German Release: 30 July 2015
I was looking forward to this movie due to one simple reason; I grew up with these games. Hell, I still have my old MS-DOS PC with Windows 3.1 and a set of games on floppy discs, such as:
Tetris
Pac-Man
Space Invaders
Etc.
I was crossing my fingers, hoping this film will turn out good. Sadly, it squandered the huge potential it had and disappointed at nearly all levels (pun intended). By no way is this comedy as bad as other late Sandler movies (remember Jack & Jill?) but it isn’t a good comedy either. In fact, this is as far from OK as possible! We, the consumers, reached a point where we are simply fed up with the yearly Sandler films.
Pixels received negative reactions upon release; it was slandered for its exhausting plot and 3-D effects. The cast’s performance was panned for the minimum effort put into this summer comedy blockbuster. Personally, I found Pixels to be a waste of my time, the movie has no viewing value and I squandered my money watching this in a theatre.
The plot revolves around three middle-aged video gamers from the 80s, who are recruited by the President of the United States to defend the world from an alien invasion. These extraterrestrials misinterpreted a time capsule, send to space 30 years ago, as a declaration of war and start attacking Earth with characters from video games.
One of the film’s main issues is the badly written story and dialogue. This was a comedy with lame one-liners and even worse toilet humour that barely made me laugh. On top of that, the trailers gave away the best parts of the movie, leaving us with the crap that made up the rest of this film. Honestly, if it would not have been for Peter Dinklage, I would have given this movie a lower rating!
What truly got me raging though, was the fact that I found this movie to be insulting towards gamers. If it would have had a sarcastic or ironic undertone, I would have accepted it but Adam Sandler’s way of depicting his character felt like he was plainly making fun of gamers for the sake of it. If I didn’t know better, I would truly believe us gamers to be as low-life losers.
Not everything about the movie was bad though. I thought the core idea of this movie was unique and interesting, but sadly it was developed poorly. Also, the scenes where the games come to life were fantastic. Especially the fight against Pac-Man, racing along the streets of New York was fantastic.
As far as the acting goes, Adam Sandler was just plain old Adam Sandler. Apart from his offensive portrayal of video gamers, he put no effort into acting at all. His repetitive theatrical style is starting to get very old. Kevin James being the President is as likely as Donald Trump ever getting voted as the chief of State. Even for a film like this, it was most disbelievable. I enjoyed James in his sitcom King of Queens, but like Sandler, he is lately giving the minimum amount of effort.
I have no comment concerning Josh Gad’s acting, apart from the fact that it contained an annoying amount of yelling. Peter Dinklage, my friend, why did you accept this role? I was so sad to see him in this movie. He is the best part of this piece of crap comedy, and yet not even he was able to save this movie.
Michelle Monaghan was nice to look at, yet apart from being the love interest for Adam Sandler (really?), she had no other function apart from looking pretty.
Chris Columbus, director of great films like; Home Alone 1 & 2, Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets, really disappointed with this summer flick. While the video game characters were fun to look at, the effects really weren’t anything special.
Verdict: Pixels was a true failure. Adam Sandler and Kevin James have been awful, the jokes weren’t funny and it is insulting its target audience. It might not be Adam Sandler’s worst film but it is far from being an all right comedy. I absolutely regret having paid to see this and give it a 3.0 out of 10.
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