What the critics are saying: ‘Pixels’

TORONTO — Now playing in cinemas, the sci-fi comedy Pixels stars Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage and Michelle Monaghan.

Directed by Chris Columbus (Home Alone), the movie was filmed in and around Toronto last summer.

It follows a team of video game experts who are enlisted to battle an invasion of aliens disguised as characters from various ’80s video games.

Should Pixels win a the weekend box office or will it be game over? Here’s a look at some of the reviews.

“Every joke is lame, every special effect unspecial,” opined Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News.

He complained Sandler “shlumps around so lazily he’s like a Robotron,” James acts “too stupid for today’s sophisticated kid audience,” and Gad is “momentously annoying.”

Neumaier concluded: “Too bad the deadly Pixels couldn’t just be unplugged.”

Max Nicholson of IGN described the movie as “laughless and insufferably dull.”

He wrote: “There’s nothing genuine or clever about the story here, and director Chris Columbus and the cast seem to know it. … Pixels‘ sense of humour is about as dated and obsolete as the games it’s referencing.”

Nicholson noted that Sandler looks “downright bored” in Pixels.

At CriticWire, Sam Adams made the same observation.

“It’s not just that Sandler’s bad in Pixels, but that he seems disengaged, even bored, as if he trusted the movie’s concept to bring in opening-weekend audiences and didn’t care about much beyond that.”

READ MORE: What the critics are saying about other recent movies

Joshua Rothkopf of  Time Out New York opined that “Sandler’s exhaustion is obvious.”

He said Pixels is aimed at fans of classic arcade games that have “Adam Sandler yammering strategy on the sidelines” and “anyone who can stomach Sandler at all.”

Rothkopf added: “Don’t concern yourself too much with the plot (they didn’t).”

At The Verge, Bryan Bishop was apparently just as unimpressed.

“When you’re talking about a star whose very brand is built upon the idea of not giving a s***, you end up with Pixels — and the middle finger once directed at the establishment ends up aimed right at audiences instead,” he wrote.

Justin Chang of Variety complained Pixels serves up a “barrage of witless one-liners, strained reaction shots and aggressively inane celebrity cameos.”

Comic Book Resources reviewer Kristy Puchko endured “a barrage of misogynistic, hackneyed and downright lazy jokes.”

Pushko wrote: “Sandler is downright off-putting as this old-school gamer with a chip on his shoulder. And what could have been a charming family film is infected by his mean-spiritedness.”

Sandy Cohen of The Associated Press wrote that Pixels falls apart before it begins.

“Part of the problem is that it’s unclear who the filmmakers think their audience is,” Cohen wrote. “This is a big-budget spectacle about 1980s nostalgia aimed at kids who have no emotional connection to the decade.”

Cohen complained the movie is “also insanely sexist, culminating with the winning male characters each rewarded with a woman. Seriously, they get human women as prizes. They literally call one a trophy.”

At Popular Mechanics, Tim Grierson summed up Pixels as “a big, blandly polished bore.”

He said it “never goes beyond a cool concept, unable to decide if it wants to be Independence Day Lite, a wiseass sci-fi comedy in the vein of Men in Black, or a silly kids movie. In the middle of it is Sandler, looking terribly lost.”

Sandler also got blamed by Mashable‘s Jordan Hoffman.

“Pixels is a can’t-lose formula. 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? Three words: Adam F#%&ing Sandler,” wrote Hoffman.

“What Galaxy Quest did so well was draw the great character moments out through action within the far-out concept. Pixels has some fun game-heavy moments, like a Centipede battle, then throws cold water over everything with unnecessary scenes of Sandler and Gad clowning around like morons.”

Hoffman added that Gad’s character is “repugnant and sexist.”

He added: “Pixels may end up making a mint and spawning a sequel, but I’d advise you to save your quarter.”

At the Toronto Sun, Bruce Kirkland was kinder.

“Sandler shows more of his true self — and it is appealing enough to enjoy this comic romp,” Kirkland opined. “Sandler is a gentle soul and smart enough to run with an outlandish story and make it seem real enough for us to get involved.”

Kirkland added that “Sandler keeps things light and lovable” and Gad is “hilarious.”

McCarthy opined that, with the exception of Monaghan (“who seems like a beautiful member of some other species amid this ragtag bunch of comics and slumming character actors”), “everyone here is doing shtick they’ve long since mastered, underplaying in Sandler’s case, to sometimes mildly amusing effect, and charging ahead like bulls where James and Gad are concerned.”

Matt Prigge of Metro singled out one scene in the movie.

“The key image in Pixels is Q*bert urinating. It’s not that it’s offensive or anything, but it is stupid — below lowest common denominator, existing only because someone ordered a poor programmer with crippling student debt to make a classic arcade character pixel-pee,” he wrote.

“It’s everything that’s wrong with the film in one surreal, can’t-unsee image: unlimited resources and a pretty good premise in the hands of people who just want to make bathroom jokes.”