Pixels An Affront To Videogames And Gamers

While it probably won’t go down in history as the worst movie featuring characters from videogames – I’m sure one of Uwe Boll’s adaptations still holds that title – Pixels will be on that list. It’s kind of hard to imagine that a movie with such a great premise – aliens try to destroy our planet by using retro videogame characters – would turn out to be such a drab, unfunny, and mean movie, but then you realize that it’s a Happy Madison film, and it all starts to become clearer. Happy Madison, for those unaware, is the studio run by Adam Sandler, who is also the lead of Pixels. He plays Sam Brenner, someone who was really good at arcade games in the ’80s and now works as someone who installs home theater systems. His best friend is Will Cooper (Kevin James), another videogame player who somehow became the President of the United States. Yes, you read that correctly: Kevin James is playing the President of the United States. Someone probably should have looked at that casting and immediately thought about how life is too short. James and the rest of the cast are all awful, but most of them are given so little to do that you can’t really blame them for phoning it in. Anyway, because of reasons too contrived to relay, aliens have challenged humans to big-scale versions of ’80s arcade games. So, it’s up to Sam, Will, and a couple of other individuals lovingly referred to as “nerds” to win the games and save the planet. The idea, as far as the filmmakers are concerned, is to appeal to the nostalgia that current-day gamers might have for games like Pac-Man, Centipede, Space Invaders, and so on. “Sick of it” is a pretty apt way to describe my feelings toward Pixels, actually. It’s boring, unfunny, mean-spirited, and no fun, but it didn’t anger me the way other awful movies can. It just left me feeling apathetic – perhaps “defeated” would be a better way to describe it. I couldn’t muster any hatred for it; I just wanted to move on and ignore the fact that it exists. It’s a really bad movie, yes, but it’s not something on which I wanted to spend any more of my time or thoughts. It passed through me as soon as it entered and failed to leave an impression. About the only good aspect to Pixels are the special effects used to create the real-life retro videogames. They’ve got an interesting look, and the way they demolish things on our planet gives us a look you don’t often see in films or videogames. They don’t so much destroy things as transform them into voxels, which is accomplished with some pretty good CGI. All this does is serve as a reminder of what could have been done with this premise if it wasn’t transformed into a bog-standard Adam Sandler comedy. Pixels is the type of movie that gives those who play videogames a bad name. It represents them as awkward and mean manchildren, and despite allowing them to save the world, snickers at them at the same time. It has an interesting premise that’s wasted on this story, good special effects that only serve as a reminder of how good Pixels could have been, and a complete lack of humor. It left me feeling more apathetic than I’ve felt leaving a movie in a while. It’s an affront to videogames, gamers, and cinema. Bottom Line: Pixels is an awful movie. It’s boring, insulting, unfunny, and a waste of a good premise. Recommendation: Forget that Pixels exists and go play some Frogger, Tetris, or Donkey Kong. [rating=1.5]