Review of Pixels (2015) by Chris O — 24 Jan 2016

Although "Pixels" has some decent comedic moments and a nice throwback to those old arcade games of the 90's, this movie show's that a trip to the theater to watch this film is almost as useless as going to the arcade nowadays.

Now, for every good thing this film did, it countered with five more bad qualities. I'm going to get my positive out of the way first, and then we'll get into the bad.

"Pixels" is the story about a world where old classic video games invade the planet as an act of war. When we sent a probe up into space, it contained many of earth's favorite things, including video games. Aliens took this as a sign, and they recreated said video games in order to bring war upon earth. Now this plot already sounds ridiculous, but it's always about execution. Did this movie execute well? Well, no, not really.

There were some decent moments where I actually laughed, but that was primarily because of Josh Gad. He was my favorite part of this movie, and I actually wouldn't mind seeing him in more movies. He's got a knack for comedies, and I won't be surprised if he's in another film very soon. Adam Sandler was, well, himself. He didn't do anything different in this movie than he has in others, but he was suitable as always. But now onto Kevin James. I mean, seriously, Kevin James as the President of the United States? That was the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, and seen. It was stupid and insulting in every way, and although Kevin James wasn't a bad actor, the script was downright awful. Michelle Monaghan was also stuck in a forced, awkward romance with Sandler, and it just didn't work. Peter Dinklage was fine, but I really didn't care for him. The character I really loved though was Qbert, which was an excellent addition to the film. He was so cute and likable, and I would've rather had a movie about him rather than watch this film.

Now, this movie is downright absurd in every way. I get that this movie is about video games invading the earth, but that doesn't give an excuse to have a poor screenplay. Kevin James is the President, Adam Sandler dates Michelle Monaghan, there are several racist moments within this movie, the plot is bland, the comedy (although a couple of decent moments) is mostly garbage and weak, and this movie is extremely predictable. There really was nothing that was notable in this film, and it was ludicrous in every way.

Overall, although it had some mildly entertaining moments, there really was nothing special in this movie. It felt like nothing really happened, and I was bored for most of the movie. Even when the video game mayhem was going down, I didn't find myself invested in this film. If anything, I could've just played the actually PacMan game to find more entertainment in my life.

The visuals hold up decently as well. Whenever the video game aliens are hitting walls or objects, the environment around it pixalates like it would in a video game. That was kind of cool, and although I wasn't mesmerized by the visuals, it wasn't terrible either.

There were also plenty of awkward moments in this movie, and plenty of times where it felt like the director never took its audience seriously. I wish that directors nowadays would give their audience a little more credit, and realize that we don't have to have our hand held throughout every step in the movie. They don't have to tell us straight up what is occurring, and this movie was just as stupid as it's screenplay.

The logic is also unbearable at times, as they pass the aliens off as light energy coming down to destroy us, or again, having Kevin James as the President. I know I've mentioned that several times now, but it's true. Early on in the movie, they establish that he is incompetent and uneducated, which leads me to believe that if our world one day nominated a man of his caliber for President, our world would truly be dead. They even have Kevin James mating with an alien, which made me almost execute this movie on the spot.

In the end, although this movie was poorly written, directed, and shot, it wasn't absolute terrible. It was still bearable at times, and it's the kind of movie you can watch for mindless, semi-fun times. It's not a quality movie, but I wasn't in complete distress. In the end, it's not something I'm recommending, and it's not one you should watch, but since I still had a tad bit of fun, I will give it 2 stars.