PIXELS – The Review

Review by Dane Marti

Directed by Chris Columbus, PIXELS will definitely take many of us back to an era that once seemed new and exciting, but now appears as old as the Civil War.

Starting with a kid zooming through his neighborhood on bike while Cheap Trick blazes on the soundtrack, I was immediately hooked: The year is 1982. Actually, I hoped that most of the film would take place during this time, an era when many of us were coming of age, but…how silly of me! It’s 2015, and as much as I find recent times to be banal and abrasive, this is the age that modern kids live in. The makers of the movie are obviously hoping for many youthful viewers ‘accompanied by their parental units, of course. I also believe this film should and will make a hefty sum at the box office, as long as kids of all ages don’t take it too seriously.

I graduated from High School in 1982 and many of the thoughts that I had both back then and in the present are cleverly utilized as dialogue in this wonderful, bright and witty film. We’re not talking about high intellectual ideas. It has more to do with what every generation inevitably discovers: We all have dreams and ambition. Unfortunately, as time passes and we age, we must often curtail or scale down some of our deepest dreams of Greatness. At least this is what happened to me. Of course, the film also reminds us that we still can do AMAZING things, that there is always time to fall in love, sing with a cool rock band or blast evil aliens—even change the world for the better!

We’re not talking serious Cinematic Art here. However, the film is damn entertaining: It doesn’t take itself too seriously but offers up a plethora of chuckles.

Life hasn’t turned out exactly as Sam (Adam Sandler) and his friend Will (Kevin James) had expected it to! Well, some dreams were realized, even if the popularity polls don’t exactly dig you: His friend became the President of the United States–he’s still a nerd. Adam Sandler, on the other hand, works in a neon orange outfit as a computer tech nerd, still mentally recalling the heartache at coming in second during a big arcade game competition in ’82. I guess you could say that his life has been in standstill. I wouldn’t call him a loser. He’s obviously intelligent, funny and reasonable, but with a marriage that went bad, he’s coasting. Middle Age life is not what he had hoped it would be back in the early 80’s, back when kids listened to New Wave music and went to arcades for teenage kicks and fun. I can relate to this. For the entire visual dazzle that this movie offers, it also has a beating heart and soul for the characters and times that they have lived through.

The zany Science Fiction Storyline has something to do with a cargo of pop culture items, which NASA has blasted into space on the chance that someday the items might make contact with an alien race and they’d learn about our culture. Well, surprise! The aliens do find the menagerie of items, but they get the wrong idea! They believe that this fun stuff is somehow an evil and abrasive offensive threat to their civilization.

Appropriating the colorful video games of the yesteryear, they send regurgitated and oversized versions of the game characters back to earth on a colorful counter-offensive of humorous proportions.

There is music from the 1980’s: Spandau Ballet and Queen, but I was hoping for a bit more, including perhaps ‘The Police’ or ‘Elvis Costello’ Also, as an odd communication from the evil forces from another world we get cameos from Tammy Faye Baker, Madonna, from her first few years of fame, Ronny Reagan, Hall and Oats and the good old characters from Fantasy Island. Hell, Max Headroom even appears in one scene!

Many people might have issues with the sexist concepts in the film, but the focus of the characters is the adolescent humor of the early 80’s. I think some of the satire in the movie might have gone farther and been more incisive, but I realized the limitations going in. I wasn’t taking it all that seriously. Sure, the screenplay could have had more interesting references, but the beautiful C.G. imagery was beautifully handled and I didn’t expect the film to be ‘The Third Man.’

With imagery that is colorful and inventive, but never too detailed, the movie plays like a twisted version of ‘War of the Worlds’ (both new and old versions), ‘Tron’ and the ‘Lego Movie’. Perhaps some viewers, many young and not well versed or caring in such games as Pac Man, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders, won’t appreciate the film as much. Still, the film’s pacing and humor never flow to far from the mark. It has a cool entertainment to eye candy ratio, which, as an old and dedicated fan of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I found infectious.

3 of 5 Stars