Review of Pixels (2010) by Jesse O — 31 Oct 2015

Sometimes I think that people review Sandler films based on his reputation. Don't get me wrong, though, I think that a lot of his movies are just awful and his laziness has pretty much been confirmed as, during the promotional phase for Blended, he pretty much admitted in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel that his movies are, essentially, paid vacations.

Don't get me wrong, however, I'm not trying to suggest that this film was good, or anything of the sort, I just think that it's more inspired than your typical Sandler project. While I wouldn't recommend this, part of me believes that, again, a lot of the negative reaction, is simply based off of Sandler's reputation and consistently appearing in awful movies since 1999.

By one token, Sandler has no one to blame but himself for this. He could've put so much more of an effort if he wanted to and yet he hasn't. But we also have to be objective here and say that the movie isn't as bad as one would normal expect from a film Sandler's attached to.

It also doesn't feel like an excuse for Sandler to get his friends a paycheck. While Kevin James does appear in this movie, and Nick Swardson makes a small appearance, this doesn't end up feeling like the typical Happy Madison productions where all of Sandler's friends, no matter how untalented they actually are, make an appearance and completely drag the movie down with their antics.

Maybe part of that is the fact that Happy Gilmore co-produced the film with Chris Columbus' production company, 1492 Pictures. So it's not like Sandler could've made all of the decisions. So, honestly, I think that helped a lot to clear out a lot of the unnecessary elements that Sandler films usually have.

But, honestly, I think this film is a little more inpsired than one would normally expect from a film with Sandler in it. Though, honestly, there's no denying that this is, essentially, Ghostbusters with old-school videogame characters instead of ghosts.

The comparisons are obvious and they're pretty much invited by the way the film is structured and put together. But I thought the integration of the old-school games was actually pretty solid and it gave the film a different feel than your typical sci-fi/action/adventure comedy.

The problem comes in the fact that the film is fairly lazily put together and poorly paced. There's long stretches of time where there's no real comedy to speak of. And, honestly, Jane Krakowski, a tremendous comedic actress, is in this goddamn film and you wouldn't actually know that she's here with how little she's actually on-screen.

That's just a travesty, to waste someone who clearly can do so much more than what she was allowed to show. I may think the film is fine and watchable, at best, but I'm not about to suggest that it is a good movie, because it is not.

There's no reason that this movie, at the very least, shouldn't have been fun. You have Space Invaders, Galaga, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and a whole host of different old-school gaming characters invading earth and THIS is the best that you can come up with? Seriously? Don't get me wrong, the game characters themselves add a lot to the film, but a movie needs more than cool scenes with game characters to be good.

The scripting of the characters themselves wasn't great, it's exactly what you'd expect from a Sandler movie, except not as mean-spirited, but there's not much for the actors to work with here.

I like Josh Gad, I like Michelle Monaghan and I like Peter Dinklage, but the fact is that they're not given nearly enough here. And, with the film being the way it is, it's not even so much about the acting, it's about everything that surrounds the 'Arcaders', as they are called, while they save the world.

Honestly, the best part of the film, to me, is the credits, not for a snarky reason, but because they recap the entire movie in 8-bit graphics. It's kinda silly to recap everything that you just literally saw, but I thought it worked.

The problem is that the movie gives off the impression of being fun without it actually being fun, I think that's why the reaction to the film, among audiences, wasn't as negative as the critical reaction.

I fit somewhere in the middle of that. I don't think it's nearly as bad, at least offensively bad, as some of Sandler's past films like Grown Ups 2 or Jack and Jill, but it's also not even close to as 'good' as the audience reaction.

It's fine and it's watchable and anything, but some of the decisions perplex and the scripting leaves a lot to be desired in relation to how lazy it actually is. It wants to rely on its cool concept in order to get its point across without making much of an effort to tell an interesting story with entertaining characters.

Some of the cast is good, but not good enough to save the film. Maybe I was a little more forgiving towards this film because I rented it for free off of Redbox, so I didn't throw money away on a film I hated.

It's a fairly harmless film, but it won't really inspire much anything else. I can't exactly give it a glowing recommendation, it's just not a good movie. I mean it's not like you'll hate watching it, but there's also no real reason to watch this, unless you're a diehard Sandler fan.

Other than that, you can skip this and you won't be missing out on anything special.