[spacer height=”32″]
SPOILER LEVEL: 3 of 5.
PLOT: The only ones who can stop an alien invasion in the form of early 80’s arcade games are the nerds who were the champions “back in the day.”
REVIEW: To watch Pixels, you need to a) wear your 3-D glasses, and b) bring your sense of humor.
If you don’t wear your 3-D glasses during the movie, the picture will look all blurry. If you don’t bring your sense of humor to the movie, the picture will look all blurry.
If you follow those two simple directions, and find a little bit of that “inner child” within you, you are going to be immensely entertained. Pixels is a breath of fresh air. It’s fun-filled summer entertainment. It’s a popcorn movie.
The plot is ridiculous…to an adult trying to logic their way through it like some sort of Scrooge. But when GALAGA launches a swarm attack against the city, when TETRIS is crumbling buildings, when a gigantic PAC-MAN is eating everything in its way, when Q-BERT is the friendly sidekick, at a certain point you have raise your arms, get down on your knees, suspend disbelief, and proclaim out loud, “Take me!!!!!!”
See, the main character, Brenner (Adam Sandler), has had a hard time growing up. He peaked at 13, with his mastery of video games, the only thing he was ever good at, and as an adult, he has struggled to find his footing. This movie is Brenner’s fairy tale. It’s not your story, where you founded a dot com and became a millionaire overnight. Nor is it your story, where you made partner at a law firm. It isn’t even your story, where you met the girl of your dreams on the Internet, fell in love, and lived happily ever after.
This is Brenner’s story, where he is the one person who can save the world because of his one skill, the one thing that makes him more capable than the rest of us. Just because he’s a nerd, and his one skill is video games, doesn’t mean he is any less entitled to save the planet than an Iron Man or a Superman. Just like these heroes, he deserves our respect.
Pixels is a 13-year-old boy’s dream come to life. Brenner didn’t get his chance to fulfill this dream when he was 13. Instead, he gets to become 13 again as an adult, and isn’t this a rare privilege?
When we ride Alice in Wonderland at Disneyland, as adults, it’s too easy to notice the painted flat sets, the black lights, and the artificiality of it all. But when we bring our son or daughter on the ride, they are wide eyed and in awe because to them, for those brief 5 minutes, they believe they are in Wonderland, and we live vicariously through them.
Over the duration of this two hour movie, Brenner has to channel his inner 13-year-old, just as we have to do as adults when we go on Alice in Wonderland, and we are putting ourselves in Brenner’s world, living vicariously through him.
When Daniel Craig was chosen to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, he got slammed in the media. Then he delivered a performance in Casino Royale that blew everyone away. Craig earned his respect.
There was a stretch during the Gigli era, when it was fashionable to bash Ben Affleck. Years later, he has earned his respect back, and Affleck is on the path to knock our socks off with his take on Batman.
This may not quite be a mega-budget huge blockbuster franchise, but Adam Sandler seems to be taking a similar unfounded beating by the media. I’m not sure what movie others out there have been watching, but the Sandler I see in Pixels seems much more subdued, more humbled, with a much subtler performance. He certainly has his moments of shtick, but he seems quite content to defer the attention-grabbing performances to his supporting cast, and I really appreciated this.
Like Brenner, his fellow Arcaders have grown up, with varying degrees of success, or lack thereof. Being recruited to defend the world allows them to share in the fantasy, to give up their adult responsibilities and become 13 years old again.
This is none the more apparent than with Kevin James as President Cooper. Cooper, in a way, handles his presidency similarly to how Josh (Tom Hanks) “acted” as an adult in Big. Cooper wants to do all the right things, he wants to look the part. And yet, during a photo op reading a book to young children, he gets into a playful argument with one of the kids, and gets pounded in the media for it. All he wants to do is share a moment with his wife, but he gets caught on camera stuffing cake into his face and looks completely ridiculous.
While Cooper has had to succumb to the biggest of adult responsibilities on the planet, being the President of the United States, everything inside him still wants to be that 13-year-old gamer. How he is able to evade each and every secret service operative, I have no idea, but when he dawns the Arcader suit towards the end and stands alongside his friends to defeat Donkey Kong, he is truly in his element.
Eddie (Peter Dinklage), is the complete opposite of Cooper, and finds himself in prison and incapable of functioning in adult society as a result of peaking at 13 years old. He makes a “Snake Plissken” deal with the government for his release in exchange for his gaming services to defeat the aliens, and his is a story of redemption. No, this isn’t as sophisticated as Michael Corleone alone in The Godfather Part 3 tormented by the sins of his past. A digital Paperboy just threw a paper at the audience in 3-D. Lighten up. Eddie’s arc sends a perfect message, with a good lesson about life, to the 13-year-old watching Pixels and the 13-year-old in all of us.
I thought for sure it was going to be Dinklage, who definitely has some great moments, but it’s Josh Gad as Ludlow who truly steals the show. Gad is hilarious. His performance alone is worth the price of admission. The character is still a virgin, a conspiracy theorist, who lives in his grandmother’s basement, and is a brilliant mind. He exists in his own universe, and therefore seems the most content out of all of them to be living as an adult. It’s why he has a “nothing to lose” persona. Gad is channeling his inner Chevy Chase here, infusing both a comedic wit and physical comedy into the character. Like Chase, he can do something interesting with ordinary dialogue, and he can create something humorous when the situation calls for him to simply stand there.
Michelle Monaghan gives us everything as Violet. She’s a single mother. She’s the love interest. She’s the tough military mind that invents the weapons technology to combat the aliens. And she’s clearly a nerd at heart as well, flipping around that Donkey Kong grid in her custom-fitted Arcader jumpsuit like a natural.
Director, Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), is playing in a sandbox of fun with Pixels. Here, he takes these adult characters, and infuses the same kid-emphasized tone that he has so brilliantly executed across his extensive body of work.
There is a fresh originality to the visual effects that makes this film a stand alone one-of-a-kind. Ever try playing one of those old Nintendo games these days? The blurry low resolution is actually painful to your eyes. To blow this concept up onto a huge movie theater screen, in pristine high resolution, in 3-D, and not only not have it not hurt, but have it actually looking awesome, is a huge creative achievement. It’s because each pixel is, quite literally, alive. The palette of bright color that explodes on screen when these video games attack is visually interesting and fun.
I admit it. I’m the guy who pretends I’m inside Radiator Springs when I ride the Racers and I’m the guy who chooses to believe I’m flying down a Death Star trench on Star Tours at Disneyland. So I’m the guy who found myself thoroughly entertained by Pixels.
GRADE: A-.