Pixels (2015)

Originally published July 25, 2015 on FrontRowCentral.com

Pixels is a sci-fi comedy based on a few assertions that video game fans apparently find upsetting: First and foremost, it’s based on the idea (from this short film) that aliens misinterpret our classic arcade games as a declaration of war. Second, that of all people, Adam Sandler and Kevin James are tasked with saving the world from this 8-bit threat. Third, that nerds can save the world through a useless talent like video gaming. And finally, that all of this is a hilarious joke. Those facts rub some the wrong way. I understand that. Nerds don’t like being made fun of in mainstream comedies any more than they like being made fun of anywhere else. And they especially don’t like it when Adam Sandler is the one making fun. He comes across as a cultural interloper appropriating their favorite things for a quick laugh and an easy buck.

You have to ask yourself, though, “Haven’t we learned by now that this is just what Adam Sandler does? Is this a line in the sand that still needs to be drawn?” So when it comes to Pixels, I find it hard to be genuinely upset at any of the choices it makes. None of it angers or frustrates me as a child of the 80s or as a fan of video games, because I realize all too well that I am not the target audience for this film. I look at Pixels and see a dumb comedy that cribs a little too much from Independence Day and Ghostbusters, and pitches far too many of its jokes to the cheap seats. In and of itself, that’s not enough reason to hate this film. Pixels is by no means a good film, but it’s not the aggressive smearing that gaming fans seem to assume it is, either.

Back in the day, Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler) was a video arcade whiz-kid, coming in second place at the 1982 World Arcade Championship. Now, he’s a schlubby loser working for an off-brand Geek Squad installing TVs and Playstations. His best buddy Cooper (Kevin James), meanwhile, has gone on to become President of the United States. When aliens challenge the Earth to a giant-size arcade duel to the death, Cooper calls upon Brenner’s expertise (at knowing what Galaga is) to save the world. Along with fellow arcade wunderkind and conspiracy theorist wacko Ludlow (Josh Gad), special weapons expert Violet (Michelle Monaghan), and 1982 gaming champion/convicted felon Eddie (Peter Dinklage), Brenner must save the world by winning a series of increasingly outlandish gaming challenges.

Right off the bat, you can spot all the lazy character development right there on the surface. Kevin James is the president because it gives Brenner an excuse to explain the situation to generals who have no idea what’s going on (and who are almost entirely played by old people like Brian Cox). Violet is really only in the movie to give Sandler someone to make googly eyes over and then to make fun of when she rebuffs his advances. (And because otherwise the story would have no real female characters at all.) The only reason Ludlow is here is because Sandler’s not about to make himself look like an actual schlubby loser who’s never kissed a girl. Finally, the film needs a character like Eddie because someone has to have a redemption arc, and also because Peter Dinklage does a pretty spot-on impression of real-life King of Kong villain Billy Mitchell.

The characters and the jokes they make are vintage Happy Madison, in that they’re woefully unfunny and sometimes insanely regressive. Sandler is especially bad, playing Brenner like Happy Gilmore twenty years on, tired of his own shtick and just ready to take a nap. He’s the charismatic black hole at the center of this film, bent on sucking all the joy and energy out of all the insane crap happening around him. Thankfully, Josh Gad is here to pick up the slack, which is not a sentence I ever thought I’d have to write. Standing next to Brenner, Ludlow is a screeching vortex of sadness and shame. He’s the stereotypical basement-dweller writ large (and latently homosexual, because this is a Happy Madison production), but when the film lets Josh Gad run wild, Ludlow becomes weirdly endearing.

The film surrounding these characters, though, is often delightfully bonkers. At times it feels like director Chris Columbus is fighting Sandler’s impulse to turn the whole thing into a joke by going huge with everything else. The action setpieces, based on games like Centipede, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, are surprisingly well-conceived and are unquestionably the highlights of the film. The Centipede sequence that takes place in London is the moment where Pixels really starts to click, but is almost completely undercut by a bunch of jokes about how British people talk funny. Other moments thump the “We Will Rock You” cue pretty hard (see also: the trailers), and it’s almost unfair how effectively that song can still pump an audience up over literally anything.

At some point, I realized what I was actually watching was a souped-up, $100 million episode of Regular Show. That cartoon plays in the exact same cultural wheelhouse as this film, with the added benefit that each episode is mercifully short and knows exactly who its audience is. This film, on the other hand, is a 100-minute feature film tailored to an audience that I can’t imagine actually exists. Anyone young enough to be excited for a film like this will wonder why there aren’t Fruit Ninja and Angry Bird aliens. Meanwhile, anyone familiar with 80s throwbacks like Max Headroom, Q*Bert and Loverboy hopefully have better things to do with their lives than watch stale cheez whiz like Pixels.