Pix­els

Pix­els is a cheer­less calami­ty that yearns for the sal­ad days of the ear­ly ​’80s, even when its gen­der pol­i­tics remain hope­less­ly strand­ed some­time in the Mid­dle Ages. It’s the most archa­ic, anti­quat­ed, and down­right old­fan­gled endurance test you’ll like­ly face in a mul­ti­plex this year; a real schlub of a movie that doesn’t just fly in the face of fash­ion, it man-spreads proud­ly before all pre­con­ceived notions of taste and decen­cy. In oth­er words, it’s the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of receiv­ing a super­mar­ket brand deodor­ant gift set on Christ­mas morn­ing: you don’t want it, you’ll nev­er use it, and frankly, it stinks.

Only the first 10 min­utes are semi-bear­able. The film kicks off with a flash­back to 1982, when a 12-year old gam­ing genius called Sam Bren­ner tries and fails to defeat his devi­ous rival, Eddy Plant, in the final chal­lenge of a high-pro­file arcade game tour­na­ment. Dur­ing these ear­ly moments, Pix­els hob­bles along on sheer nos­tal­gia: kids with big hair and flared jeans skid around on bad ass Chop­pers, and ref­er­ences to retro arcade clas­sics like Gala­ga and Pac-Man abound. They even throw in a bub­bly Dan Aykroyd cameo for good mea­sure, replete with super­nat­u­ral­ly pig­ment­ed bouf­fant. (Lat­er, in a bravu­ra act of cor­po­rate syn­er­gy, there’s a prod­uct place­ment for Aykroyd’s own brand of Crys­tal Head vod­ka that is so crass and dis­tract­ing you’ll want to applaud.)

For a short while, Pix­els is rather fun, albeit in a low rent, Super 8 meets Hot Tub Time Machine way. Yet there’s a whiff of inau­then­tic­i­ty that omi­nous­ly hov­ers in the air dur­ing these ini­tial scenes, and then spreads like a wild mist as the film pro­gress­es. The direc­tor is Chris Colum­bus, the man behind the screen­plays of pop cul­ture mile­stones like Grem­lins and The Goonies, and the kind of film­mak­er that real­ly should know how to bring this Ambli­nesque world to life. But it feels like a chintzy pas­tiche of a Chris Colum­bus film. Everything’s just a lit­tle too height­ened, too car­toon­ish, too gar­ish: a moon­struck mem­o­ry of a block­buster made 30 years ago, con­jured by an old­er man strug­gling to recap­ture the ener­gy and excite­ment of his ear­li­er work.

Sad­ly, the pic­ture takes a turn for the worse when the action shifts to the present day. By this point in his life, Bren­ner is a 46-year-old fail­ure. He receives the call to adven­ture from his child­hood friend the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States (who, by the way, is Paul Blart: Mall Cop) when the Earth is threat­ened by an alien horde dis­guised as pixel­lat­ed man­i­fes­ta­tions of icon­ic game char­ac­ters. Bren­ner teams up with his child­hood neme­sis Grant (Peter Din­klage) and their sin­is­ter con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist pal Lud­low Lam­on­soff (Josh Gad), and togeth­er with a token female, they save the world from the loom­ing extrater­res­tri­al per­il using their mad gam­ing skills.

Game on? Not a chance. The elder Bren­ner is played by the des­ic­cat­ed husk of Adam San­dler, a com­e­dy per­former who con­tin­ues to chal­lenge the very nature of com­e­dy per­for­mance sim­ply by resist­ing the temp­ta­tion of humour. Sure, San­dler has had his moments, but has the Bil­ly Madi­son star nev­er tru­ly lets rip. His fil­mog­ra­phy is scat­tered with pro­duc­tions that ade­quate­ly ser­vice the require­ments of his core audi­ence, but there are few roles in the back cat­a­logue, if any, that could be described as great.

Pix­els isn’t just not great, it’s cat­a­stroph­ic. San­dler spends half the movie look­ing haunt­ed. He clocks in a charm­less, charis­ma-free turn that lacks any kind of verve or wit. He deliv­ers the lines, but he rarely appears to believe in them. Frankly, he looks like he’d rather be play­ing beer pong with the guys from Grown Ups 1 and 2 than deal­ing with this jive.

The apa­thy extends to the crew too. You can sense Colum­bus grow­ing steadi­ly bored with the mate­r­i­al before our eyes. Check out prac­ti­cal­ly any scene that requires a crowd of extras, be it an action sequence, or a pres­i­den­tial ball: in the back­ground you’ll see dozens of peo­ple, stand­ing around, not inter­act­ing ter­ri­bly con­vinc­ing­ly, and nev­er tru­ly blend­ing into the scenery. They look like Antony Gorm­ley sculp­tures. Fine if the scene in ques­tion is a piece of dia­logue or char­ac­ter work, and the camera’s close-up on the core actors. But when you’re try­ing to con­vince an audi­ence that an alien army, dis­guised as a giant maraud­ing cen­tipede, is try­ing to take out a squadron of high­ly trained sol­diers, and said sol­diers look like they’re wait­ing for the num­ber 68 to West Nor­wood? Well, that’s a prob­lem. Did some­body just for­get to direct them?

To be fair to San­dler and Colum­bus, they’re ill-served by a screen­play (if that’s what we’re call­ing it) that dares us to hate every sin­gle one of its heroes. No won­der they can’t be both­ered. For exam­ple, short­ly after we’re intro­duced to Bren­ner in his final, mid­dle-aged form, he encour­ages the afore­men­tioned token woman not only to get drunk, but then, in her most vul­ner­a­ble state, to make out with him. The token woman turns out to be Lieu­tenant Colonel Vio­let van Pat­ten (Michelle Mon­aghan), a high-rank­ing army offi­cial who, let’s be hon­est, deserves some­one so much bet­ter than this boor­ish los­er. Nat­u­ral­ly, they fall in love, in spite of Brenner’s over­whelm­ing creepi­ness. The mag­ic of the movies!

Women are treat­ed dia­bol­i­cal­ly. Take, for instance, the cast­ing of the amaz­ing Jane Krakows­ki in the thank­less role of First Lady. Krakows­ki is a fun­ny per­son, amply evi­denced by her razor-sharp appear­ances in TV sta­ples such as 30 Rock and Unbreak­able Kim­my Schmidt. There’s nei­ther a jeer nor jibe that Krakows­ki couldn’t knock out with mer­ci­less pre­ci­sion. The woman is a genius. In Pix­els, she appears to have three, maybe four lines of dia­logue, and that’s her lot. Aston­ish­ing­ly, there are entire scenes that require Krakows­ki mere­ly to stand there look­ing pret­ty while prop­ping up the dude with all the lines, in this case the peren­ni­al­ly awful Kevin James i.e. Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

But this isn’t the movie’s most heinous crime. That’s saved for the finale, when a lusty video game vix­en, ini­tial­ly tasked with destroy­ing Josh Gad’s char­ac­ter Lud­low, is pre­sent­ed to our fear­less, slight­ly per­vert­ed cham­pi­ons as a tro­phy for their suc­cess in – spoil­er! – defeat­ing the inter­galac­tic intrud­ers. Lud­low, hav­ing spent most of Pix­els touch­ing up oth­er mem­bers of the cast for hilar­i­ous com­e­dy effect, then appears to claim the lusty video game vix­en as an actu­al tro­phy wife. Also, the lusty video game vix­en is com­plete­ly mute, so even if she want­ed to have a say in the mat­ter, she phys­i­cal­ly couldn’t. Hon­est­ly, you’ll nev­er appre­ci­ate Gad’s per­for­mance as Olaf the Snow­man in Frozen in quite the same way again.

Are these the core mes­sages that the mak­ers of Pix­els want to send to young impres­sion­ables who buy a tick­et to their movie? That it’s ok to take advan­tage of vul­ner­a­ble women after a few drinks? That you can be one of the most tal­ent­ed com­e­dy per­form­ers around, but if you’re a woman, you’ll still only get to play sec­ond fid­dle to Paul Blart: Mall Cop? And that if you behave like a kooky sex pest for most of your adult life, you’ll be reward­ed with a lusty vix­en of your own who’ll want to repro­duce all day long? If so, that’s a movie that nobody wants to see: not in 1982, not in 2015, not ever.

And if all that sounds bad, wait until you hear what they do with Q*bert.