Review of Pixels (2010) by Preston L — 07 Nov 2015

Pixels is about aliens receiving a time capsule Earth launched into space in the 80s which included highlights from the '82 arcade game championship. The aliens take this as a declaration of war and send videogame like beings down to attack the planet. The U.S. government and the President (Kevin James) conclude that the only ones with the skill set to defend the planet are the people who were top performers at the '82 championship. These include Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler), Eddie Plant (Peter Dinklage), and Ludlow Lamonsoff (Josh Gad).

Things I Liked:

The Tone. The movie is fun. The movie is a lot of fun. It's a larger than life world full of fun characters and colors. The action is exciting to watch and the whole thing really does feel like a fun adventure at the end of the day. The movie is cartoony but a lot of the time that works really well for the style of the movie. The tone is bright, colorful, and fun, and serves the movie really well.

The Nostalgia. The movie is loaded with retro videogame references. But it also features a lot of fun 80s imagery and the whole things feels like a callback to the better days of childhood. Even though I wasn't alive in the 80s it reminded me of how much fun old challenging videogames can be and how being a kid can be fun and bright. The nostalgia factor enhanced this movie greatly.

Things I Didn't Like:

The Characters. The characters in this movie all are childish, stupid, and completely unbelievable. The movie makes them dumbed down in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience but all of them come across being some form of unlikable and at the end of the movie we don't care what happens to any of them. If we have no one to root for then there is no reason to watch the movie.

The Script. The movie's plot is shallow and the dialogue is worse. The plot could have been really cool, the ideas behind it are interesting and the way the movie does them are fun at times but the best moments, the ones that really work out, are too few and far between to appreciate properly, and then over in the blink of an eye in some cases. The dialogue drags the characters down even more and the movie feels like it was written by a bunch of 9 year olds.

Overall:

Overall, the movie is stupid, it's childish, it's lacking in good characters and it wastes a lot of potential material that could have launched it into greatness. But by the end of the movie I found myself laughing and grinning and having a good time. The movie has a lot of nostalgic images and moments that really propelled me into childhood and the tone of the movie is actually a lot of fun! I had fun watching Pixels. Is it gonna be the greatest fun I've had in the movies? Probably not, but it is a good time to be had if you just embrace the childish nature and go along for the ride.