Blockbluster: Pixels

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Blockbluster: Pixels

Postby Dr. Ambiguous » Mon Aug 17, 2015 7:59 pm

Quick Summary: Earth is attacked by aliens in the form of 1980s arcade games, and it's up to a couple of nerdy gamers to save the planet. It's a fun movie, but it falters more than a bit in execution.
Score: 4/10
More Info: IMDb

Pixels Official Trailer (Minor Spoilers)

I first saw the trailer for Pixels a few months ago during the previews before Age of Ultron, then again during the trailers for Jurassic World. I like the concept of the movie: it was silly and zany, but for the same reasons I was a bit wary about it in execution. Early reviews for the movie were strongly critical, with it averaging only 19% approval on Rotten Tomatoes (at the time of this writing). Were my fears about its failure correct? Sadly, yes.

The plot is fairly straightforward: A few dorky kids in the 1980s are big into the arcade games of the day. After a brief scene set during this time, they grow up and are at different points in their lives. One becomes the President of the United States, another works for the Nerd Brigade (essentially Geek Squad), and another is still a crazy conspiracy nutter like in his youth. Their lives have gone pretty different directions from each other. Of course, this being a movie, they're brought together to save the world.

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For reasons I won't disclose (because spoilers), the world is attacked by aliens. For the same reasons I won't disclose, they take the form of old 1980s arcade games. This idea of the movie is a fun one (yeah yeah, I know, Futurama already did it, and yes, they did it better). It's zany, and odd enough that it sounded appealing to me. But like I said before, it has a lot of flaws in its actual execution. For starters, there's too much screen time wasted on things other than the earth being attacked by Pac-Man and Centipede. Sure, you need some of this sort of thing as set-up, but there's too much time spent on the set-up, and too much downtime from the aliens mixed in between attacks. Throw in a boring and predictable romantic subplot, and you've got a recipe for a movie that needs some serious trimming.

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The movie being a comedy, we should mention the jokes. Sadly, most of the jokes are flat and unfunny, many of which are predictable as well. There's a few jokes that garner some chuckles, but none that earn hearty laughter, and most elicit only a "meh" response. Of course the meat of the movie pertains to pixelated monsters wrecking havoc upon Earth. There's some fun to be found here, and this is where the more successful comedy resides. It's not a high score, but it doesn't exhaust its stack of quarters too quickly.

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The acting in the movie is pretty subpar, but I guess that isn't surprising when Adam Sandler is the lead. Kevin James doesn't exactly help to add anything to the movie. The only actor that manages to make an impression is Peter Dinklage, who does as well as he can with the material he's given, and you can tell he has more chops than the rest of the cast.

So Pixels manages to not be quite as bad as people make it out to be, but it's far from a good movie either. The trailer makes it look more interesting than it actually is, since it cuts all of the boring filler shit that pollutes an otherwise mediocre movie. The laughs fail to linger long, and the fun is faint and fleeting, but it's not entirely absent. Certainly not a must-see, and if it catches your eye, then you're best to wait for it to hit DVD or Netflix, as it's not worth the admission price to see it in theaters.



We also have a bonus review for the movie Pixels, courtesy of 52xMax! Max will be writing more articles for us in the future, so check out the first comment below for an introduction to his style.
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Filmsy Reviews: Pixels

Postby 52xMax » Mon Aug 17, 2015 8:00 pm

PIXELS (2015)
Director: Chris Columbus.
Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad, Michelle Monaghan, Brian Cox.
Rating: Not completely terrible.

Back in 2010, a French dude named Patrick Jean made an independent short film called "Pixels", in which characters and elements from classic video games from the 8-bit era take over the world. The 2-minute short combined realistic-looking images of New York City landmarks such as the Empire State Building and Central Park, with 3D renderings of objects such as Tetris blocks and Arkanoid paddles, hence the name "Pixels". Technically speaking these objects are voxels, but I guess that name isn't quite as catchy. In any case, "Pixels" is a brilliant piece of YouTube greatness which you should all take the time to watch and like.



The good news is that someone decided to make a big budget Hollywood adaptation into a feature film. The bad news is that said someone was Adam Sandler.

Still, I decided to check out this movie because I grew up going to the arcades and playing the NES and Atari 2600, so there was no way I was going to miss it despite some horrible reviews out there (it was rated 27 on Metacritic and 18% on Rotten Tomatoes). Also, despite not being Adam Sandler's biggest fan, I think he gets more hate than he deserves, which undermines the purpose of a fair review and confuses audiences. For every Zohan and Blended that gets universally panned by the critics, there's a Jack and Jill and Grown Ups that is equally hated but is so much worse, and it becomes difficult to trust them with this sort of thing.

So I went into the theater with relatively low expectations, but hoping this would be one of the passable Sandler movies. I was expecting the childish fart jokes, the cameos by Sandler's non-actor friends who are in all of his movies, the unnecessary derailing jokes that don't actually pay off, and a very simplistic but charming story of the underachiever who gets thrown into an extreme situation that finally lets him reach his true potential, while finding true love and learning valuable lessons about friends and family. Sure enough, it was all there.

But then there's also what made me become interested on the movie in the first place: retro video games. The plot is essentially that episode of Futurama when Fry asks the What-If machine what life would be if it was more like video games (up to and including appearances by Pac-Man, Q-bert and Donkey Kong), combined with elements of the 2007 documentary The King of Kong, your traditional romp comedy tropes, and perhaps weirdest of all, elements from real life efforts of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) program.

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Earthicans: we're all about vidya, and that bass.
(are belong to us)

In 1982, a group of young gamers enter into an arcade competition, which for some reason is being recorded to be sent into space as part of a time capsule. Jump to present day, a modern civilization has intercepted these recordings and mistook them for a declaration of war, so they show up on Earth taking the form of old video game characters. It is up to these gamers, whose lives have taken very different paths through the years, to pick up the power glove and rise to the challenge, for the future of mankind.

Sounds pretty cool, right? The problem with Pixels is that, much like Nintendo's power glove, what seems like a good idea on paper goes horribly wrong in execution.

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It's so bad. Seriously, it's very very bad, avoid it.


Still, Pixels is not nearly as bad as one would think by reading the reviews. The plot is equally nonsensical and inconsistent, the characters are very cartoonish, there are tons of filler, and what passes for jokes are so obvious they can be seen coming from a mile away. And yet, the movie has more than a few redeeming moments, which may not completely make up for how messy the whole thing is, but they're definitely worth watching on their own, such as a giant Pac-Man chase across the streets of Manhattan, an army of centipedes invading the skies over London, and Peter Dinklage playing a very thinly-veiled version of arcade champion Billy Mitchell.

If you are looking for a smart comedy or a Ghostbusters for the new generation, you might want to skip it. Likewise, if you want to see a love letter to the golden days of arcades, or a faithful portrayal of the gamer lifestyle, this movie is not for you either. Perhaps we'll have better luck next year when Ready Player One and the new Ghostbusters come out.

On the other hand, if you just want an excuse to see some kickass special effects on the big screen, slapstick levels of comedy, decent if not great performances by an ensemble cast of charismatic actors (including a few amusing cameos), or tons of easter eggs from the most beloved games of the pre-console era, accompanied by a great soundtrack with classics from the '80s and '90s, then you can check out Pixels and come out relatively content.

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There are worse ways to spend a weekend.


If you'd rather watch something else along these lines, or want to wait for the DVD to come out, here are some other options to keep you entertained.

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Wreck-It Ralph (2012, Animation)


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Super 8 (2011, Sci Fi)


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The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007, Documentary)


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Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline (2011, novel)
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Last edited by 52xMax on Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Blockbluster: Pixels

Postby iMURDAu » Mon Aug 17, 2015 9:44 pm

You should also check out The Ecstasy of Order if you've ever played Tetris. Probably my favorite documentary of all time. Here's the trailer. Its $1.99 on youtube for the full movie but I watched it on Crackle for free. I'm not sure if its still up on Crackle though.

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Re: Blockbluster: Pixels

Postby FieldMarshalFry » Tue Aug 18, 2015 1:52 am

that review.... is a lot more favourable than a lot of the ones I've seen online, which seem to indicate that not only must the film be killed with fire, but everyone involved with it must be executed for Heresy, and yes, that includes Peter Dinklage, and that is putting it lightly
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Re: Blockbluster: Pixels

Postby Dr. Ambiguous » Tue Aug 18, 2015 4:37 am

FieldMarshalFry wrote:that review.... is a lot more favourable than a lot of the ones I've seen online, which seem to indicate that not only must the film be killed with fire, but everyone involved with it must be executed for Heresy, and yes, that includes Peter Dinklage, and that is putting it lightly

From what I gather, this movie is getting a lot of extra shit because it's an Adam Sandler movie. Somehow this is the first Adam Sandler movie I've seen, and based on his performance in it, I can totally see why people hate the man's work. That said, I think the movie should still be evaluated on it's own merits/faults, and not on it being a Sandler movie.
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