“This usually makes a movie good, throw it in!” So take this as a public service.
Indeed, there’s a nostalgic kick for those in the generation that grew up on classic titles such as Frogger, Donkey Kong, and Asteroids, but not much payoff to this mix of Adam Sandler’s slapstick antics with a high-concept computer-nerd revenge fantasy. And what a time.
I can nearly imagine how this would play with a different lead, and that drives me mad to say. It isn’t even 2 hours! We’re supposed to feel good that Brenner learns to think outside the box and accept a fate that’s larger than installing home theaters, yet it’s hard to ignore that Pixels suffers from the very same caged thinking. James’s President Cooper is rendered as a bumbling, incompetent idiot who can’t read out the word “catastrophe”. I was as shocked as you.
That phrase pretty much sums up Sandler’s career. However, that classic (which the same studio is now rebooting) worked because it strove to give a reality to its fantastic world that left room for humor to emerge naturally from its characters.
Michelle Monaghan is Violet, a soon-to-be-divorced mom who is a high-ranking weapons specialist for the government. Anyone see Monaghan in last year’s military drama Fort Bliss?
The interaction between the humans and the CGI invaders lacks depth and texture, even in the 3-D version I saw. Dinklage, sporting an absurdist mullet and delivering a totally cuckoo performance as the cocky little so-and-so, instantly wins that race. This is the movie he did during hiatus from Game of Thrones? He is just lucky that Josh Gad is around as a reminder that there are actors who can be worse.
It seems like Sandler is holding on to the past.
Cohen complained the movie is “also insanely sexist, culminating with the winning male characters each rewarded with a woman”.
As for the movie’s apocalyptic stakes, they’re treated with no more effect than an air-hockey match, a few smashed-up historic landmarks notwithstanding. The president remembers Sam’s one brush with greatness back in 1982, when the kid’s brilliance at recognizing patterns in videogames made him legendary in Pac-Man circles and earned him second place to Eddie “The Fire Blaster” Plant in the Donkey Kong championship battle. Apparently, this alien civilization received a communication we beamed out into the universe 30 years ago that contained our most popular games.
Don’t bother thinking too deeply about this.
There doesn’t seem to be one.
As it turns out a never identified entity sent a time capsule into space with various cultural objects in the hopes of connecting with other life forms. Aliens, after being exposed to our video games from the ’80s, have decided to invade the Earth, seeing the games as a challenge of war. By now, you have to be aware of the premise for the film. Its casting shows “Pixels” is also ignorant that more than straight white men enjoy video games and have since 1982. Jane Krakowski is terribly underused as the First Lady.
And Gad has an unsettling obsession with Dojo Quest’s Lady Lisa. Because women are mad, get it?! Whether it’s Centipede descending into London’s Hyde Park, or Pac-Man going rogue on Manhattan, or a cavalcade of characters unleashing urban destruction with Earth’s future in the balance, the immersive action scenes use visual effects to seamlessly blend grand scale with low-res creature details. It’s played like a joke!
This isn’t a bad movie.
Adam Sandler has become a husk of his former amusing self. Yet Sam remains the commander-in-chief’s big confidant, whether it’s to vent about work or to make sense of a sudden alien attack. Next, they manage to track down their old nemesis Eddie (now Peter Dinklage) for a rowdy game of “Pac-Man“, a car-chase sequence in which the beloved yellow dot-gobbler has been reborn as a villainous giant sphere munching his way through the streets of New York.
