PIXELS (2015)

PIXELS (2015)

For some reason a lot of critics hated this thing and I really can’t find a single reason why. In this movie Sam Brenner (played by Adam Sandler) is basically the best video game player of the freakin 80’s…or one of them. As part of a video game tournament, stuff from the tournament itself and a bunch of 80’s culture items gets sent up into space. It’s part of an effort for aliens to get to know humans. That pretty much pans out. At least 1 alien race decides to challenge us to video game supremacy, only they are using giant pixelated energy fields (pixel creatures) representing all the coolest 80’s arcade games characters. Sam and a few of the world’s best retro gamers could be the secret to winning this epic real life global arcade style war. There are also a bunch of military guys involved and Violet, (played by Michelle Monaghan who is best known for her appearances in the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies) who leads a research team. The research team is basically a bunch of Area 51 types that develop light beams capable of destroying the alien pixel creatures as well as other rad gadgets.

All I really needed to see from the previews of this movie was PAC-MAN eating a firetruck and I was sold. So it pretty much also meant, that if I liked something, the critics were going to freakin hate it. They did, and likely only because some critics, just hate anything imaginative, or that Adam Sandler is involved in. All of the acting in this movie is pretty great and you can tell the cast is having a ton of fun with it. I mean, this movie has a digital Max Headroom and Madonna in it, were they expecting some flawless artsy intellectual exercise? Anyway, in spite of some historical flaws, geographical issues and perhaps detail errors, this movie is an absolute blast. 

Every character in this movie is either likable or ends up likable and we really never end up completely hating the aliens either. Adam Sandler is his usual likeable self, Monaghan is a great addition bringing some more serious elements to the movie. Peter Dinklage is fantastically ridiculous as Eddie (one of the great video game players from the 80’s) as is Josh Gad as Ludlow Lamonsoff. The effects in this thing are pretty ground breaking in the sense that, I am not sure anything quite like what we get in this movie, has ever been done before. 

PIXELS is loaded with awesome even if you didn’t grow up in the 80’s and for me this one is an easy 6 out of 7. People hating on this thing need to get over themselves and this is coming from someone that doesn’t spend a ton of time worried about what other critics think. So if I am taking the time to say something about it, it means I really feel strongly about how crappy this movie was treated. Stay for the end credits, they are basically a replay of the movie in short pixelated form.

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