Any film that begins and ends with the Cheap Trick masterpiece Surrender can't be all bad and sure enough, Pixels is far from the worst film to carry Adam Sandler's name. But given the premise, the opportunity it allowed to let imagination run riot and the presence of Home Alone and Harry Potter helmer Chris Columbus in the director's chair, this geek adventure falls way short of a summer must-see. Sandler, however, is not the problem.
Turning down his shtick considerably, he plays Sam Brenner, a video game prodigy in the 1980s whose adult life has not turned out as planned. He didn't go to MIT, he's not a millionaire and Samantha Fox's hand in marriage proved elusive. Instead Sam is a home entertainment system installer who has the surround sound of middle age regret inside his own head.
The chance for redemption, however, arrives from an unlikely source: outer space. When aliens intercept a time capsule containing 80s arcade classics like Galaga, Centipede and Pac-Man, they mistake the games as declarations of war and, getting their retaliation in first, create giant versions of the characters to send back to earth. Sam and two other joystick nuts (Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage) now appear to be humanity's only hope... The Pentagon isn't optimistic.
A packed preview screening proved that Pixels will provide younger kids with some laughs. For adults - as in life so in cinema - it's an example of what might have been. Given the plot, the pacing needed to give the audience little chance to catch their breath, but certain scenes here slow things down too much with not enough quality gags to compensate in between. With no main villain, more fun is lost and, on the subject of absent characters, Dinklage's jailbird gamer appears far too late to get the best from him. Even with a bizarre Deep South-meets-Jamaica accent, the Game of Thrones star is the standout here.
Pixels died a death at the US box office but, along with his pay cheque, there is some solace for Sandler. In something of a masterstroke, 'cute' gaming legend Q*bert has usurped his throne and turns out to be the most annoying thing about the movie. And while Sandler's onscreen advice to "Live long, laugh much, love often" belongs in a far better slice of feelgood than this, at least it will remind a few viewers of a certain age that, for them, it's far from game over.
Harry Guerin
