Pixels (2015)
Directed by Chris Columbus
Video game experts are recruited by the military to fight 1980s-era video game characters who've attacked New York.
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One 1980s pop culture item it might have referenced is “The Last Starfighter” (1984), which has a very similar plot.
Like I said, the premise of "Pixels" (which was inspired by a 2010 short) is sound, and in a perfect world, it could have been the hi-tech hybrid of "The Last Starfighter" and "Ghostbusters" that it clearly wants to be.
This noxious stew -- part "The Last Starfighter," part "Ghostbusters," part "Wreck-It Ralph"-- doesn't even bother to look expensive.
Directed by Hollywood veteran Chris Columbus, Pixels aims for a mix of Ghostbusters and Independence Day, but it can barely keep Jean’s original concept afloat long enough to make it to feature length.
Among all of the U.S. presidents we’ve seen in film – Morgan Freeman sold it in “Deep Impact” and “Olympus Has Fallen” and so did Bill Pullman in “Independence Day” – James has got to be the worst one.
And so, thanks to the Sandler cabal’s input, “Pixels” feels like two different films haphazardly spliced together — like “Independence Day” cut into last year’s leaden “Blended.”
4. What’s particularly frustrating is that this concept—of our video-game icons coming to life and interacting with the real world—was done splendidly just three years ago in Wreck-It Ralph, which featured cameos from some of the same characters.
It also recalls the much cleverer “Galaxy Quest,” as well as “Wreck-It Ralph,” which impressively invented an original game with a retro 1980s feel.
Pixels isn't the heartwarming or innovative homage that Wreck-It Ralph was.
There are witty touches – the aliens deliver their challenges to the human race through manipulated images of eighties celebrities, from Ronald Reagan to Tammy Faye Bakker to Madonna – but there’s also a mechanical feel to the action, particularly in a final act that employs cute animated character Q*bert (who also appeared in Disney’s 2012 Wreck-It Ralph ) to boost kid appeal.
The special effects are pretty cool, but the film is working nostalgia already thoroughly mined in movies (including the video-game-themed “Wreck-It Ralph”) and television (“The Goldbergs” and such).
Unofficially the film also borrows some of its character dynamics from Seth Gordon's 2007 documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" about what became of arcade game champions later in life.
(Their rivalry will look very familiar to anyone who’s seen the terrific gaming documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters .)
Moviegoers looking for an arcade game fix would be much better served seeking out terrific Donkey Kong doc “ The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters .”
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It also recalls the much cleverer “Galaxy Quest,” as well as “Wreck-It Ralph,” which impressively invented an original game with a retro 1980s feel.
Take the basic premise from Galaxy Quest but swap out Star Trek with retro video games, throw in some nifty special effects and what could possibly go wrong?
The answer to that is no as well as Pixels is a schizophrenic mess, in turns entertaining and annoying, as if Galaxy Quest had been made by people without any understanding of humor.
Such a level-based structure can work – Scott Pilgrim Vs The World pulls it off because it has style, heart, and deeper themes worked into it.
“Pixels” should have taken a quirkier, more indie-feeling page from actors like Michael Cera, Alison Pill, Ellen Wong and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” rather than Adam Sandler’s same old sleepy routine and Kevin James playing a role no one could ever possibly buy.
It’s been this superhero movie or that graphic novel, and with the exception of “ Scott Pilgrim vs. the World ,” they’ve all been deathly serious.
The conceit here is that back in 1982, NASA launched into orbit a capsule that contained numerous examples of our then-contemporary popular culture as a way of reaching out to possible alien life forms that might be curious to know about that thing that we on Earth called "The Pirate Movie," including a cassette chronicling a video game championship featuring young arcade masters showing their skills at the top games of the era.
There are a few amusing bits along the way—one featuring Denis Akiyama as the creator of Pac-Man who tries to reason with his monsterized “son” will appeal to creature-feature fans as a nod to those innumerable scenes in which sensitive scientists attempt to communicate with malevolent being, always with unfortunate result (“The Thing from Another World” provides a perfect example).
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…them, 1984's "Ghostbusters," 1985's "The Goonies," and 1989's "The Wizard"?but it falls safely into the category of being a zippy tonal cousin.
The story begins on July 26, 1982, the same year "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" unleashed the exclamation "Awesome!"