Movie Review: Pixels (2015)

The movie stars Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad.

My wife and I intended on spending part of last night watching some of the shows we had recorded on DVR. However, after discovering the recorded shows were actually repeats we had seen before, I ended up picking out this movie to watch instead.

Even though this film looked interesting in the previews, I have been putting off watching it for some time now. This is because, while Adam Sandler has had some good movies, he's also had quite a few that weren't very good. And, in all honesty, I was expecting this one to fall into that latter category. However, after watching it last night, I do have to admit it was one of his better recent endeavors.

The weaponized video game classics were actually pretty fun to watch, especially when the aliens used a real-life version of Centipede (a game I spent hours playing as a kid). The decision to have all heck break loose at the end and throw in just about every classic character you could think of was also a nice touch, though I would have loved to see some of them do a bit more damage.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by Sandler's performance in this movie too. As I said, I'm not a fan of a lot of his movies and a big part of the reason for that is he tends to play his roles a little too over the top to the point he can ruin an otherwise decent film. This time, however, he kept things tapered down quite a bit and, while I'm not sure the movie was necessarily any better because he was in it (it was a role quite a few other actors could have played), he didn't hurt it.

My only real complaint about this movie is it was a film that was in desperate need of a surprise twist. In fact, I kept waiting for one to happen and it never did.

Personally, I would have loved it if the "alien" weapons were really controlled by the president (James) in an effort to improve his sagging approval rating, making him a surprise bad guy. Instead, the main bad guy ended up being Donkey Kong, which was pretty darn obvious since that was the one video game Sam (Sandler) couldn't defeat as a kid. While it didn't ruin the movie, it did make the ending a little more predictable than it needed to be.

It's not the best comedy I've watched or even one of Sandler's best films. However, it was a movie that did exceed my expectations and is worth watching at least once.

My Grade: B