YMMV / Pixels

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Delving deeper into the "character" part; Q*Bert never showed any shapeshifting abilities before turning into Lady Lisa - did she somehow hear Ludlow and then forcefully overwrite Q*Bert with her own data just to be with him again?
• Ass Pull:
  • Eddy using a cheat code to teleport in the Pac-Man fight. The movie doesn't even try to explain how a code from a video game could be used to make a real car teleport, plus it makes no sense to have a code that applies to the villain characters rather than the player one.
  • Eddy also apparently used this same cheat code in "Pac Man" to win during his competitive arcade days, which opens up a whole host of Fridge Logic. For one, Pac Man doesn't have any cheat codes (at least not the versions from 1980), and being one of the most popular arcade games ever, almost anyone could tell you that. Not to mention how did he enter it at a tournament in front of dozens of spectators with no one noticing?
  • Q*Bert somehow becoming Lady Lisa and having babies with Ludlow.
• Award Snub: Despite being nominated for several Razzies, it didn’t win a single one.
• Awesome Music: "Game On", from Good Charlotte and Waka Flocka Flame, is an incredible adrenaline rush.
• Cliché Storm: The film contains the most common of the Adam Sandler movie tropes, such as the quirky Loser Protagonist that society thinks will amount to nothing, The Bully who puts him down and a Will They or Won't They? subplot. If you're familiar with any of his past films, you could predict where every plot point would go long before it resolves itself in-story.
• Critical Dissonance: The film seemed to fare marginally better with audiences than with critics. It's rated 50% on the Rotten Tomatoes user scores and 5.7/10 on IMDb, indicating a pretty even split between those who liked it and those who hated it.
• Director Displacement: No one seems to know that the one and only Chris Columbus directed this film. Y'know, the guy that brought us Adventures in Babysitting, the first two Home Alone films, the first two Harry Potter films, Mrs. Doubtfire, and others.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Eddie is usually considered the highlight of the movie, thanks to Peter Dinklage putting effort into his performance.
• Fandom Rivalry: Fans of the Yogscast did not like fans of this film due to its advertising that tried to exploit the Yogscast fanbase. The Yogscast were originally approached to help promote the movie, but the group backed out of the negotiations when the Pixels people wanted full creative control over the promotions. But then marketing was made to specifically target the Yogscasts' various Youtube channels, using ads where the film's stars acted like the Yogscast wanted their fans to see the movie. This was all without including the Yogscast in the production of new adverts, paying them for using their channels as an advertising platform, or even pronouncing their name properly. High profile members of the group such as Simon Lane, Hat Films' Ross Hornby and artist Teutron all slammed the film (plus Sandler specifically) for what they view as poor effort, as well as shady conduct and poor behaviour at best.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The doctored '80s footage used to spread the aliens' message looks a little different now that the spread of deepfakes became a legitimate concern for the actual US government.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the stories featured in Futurama episode Anthology of Interest II is what if videogames were real, which starred Fry being the saviour of humanity at beating space invaders. It too played around with similar tropes and jokes to this movie almost 13 years prior to this film existing.
  • In 2015, Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage fought iconic video game characters with Adam Sandler. In 2016, Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage become video game characters in The Angry Birds Movie.
  • Wreck-It Ralph, an early video game-based movie that was greatly acclaimed, yet failed to feature Mario. This movie was the exact opposite since Mario gets a 3 second cameo. Although director commentary makes it clear that Wreck-It Ralph was perfectly capable of including Mario; they simply didn't have a good role in the film for him to perform that was worthy of the legendary mascot.
  • Eddie is found to have used cheat codes for Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, invalidating his actual records. This character was based off of Billy Mitchell, the "King of Kong" (who even got a movie documenting this), who in 2018 was stripped of his records after he was possibly found to have cheated by setting them via an emulator as opposed to a physical cabinet.^note The evidence used is from the order the sprites load into the game. Billy's footage appears similar to at least one emulator, though not identical. Later photographs revealed that, even if the game wasn't played on an emulator, he used an eight-way joystick, which is also banned in Donkey Kong scorerunning. Some were even happy to note that Billy looked sort of like a taller version of Peter.
  • We get a scene with Odysseus and Agamemnon screaming like girls and hugging each other when they think they're about to die.
  • One plot point in the movie is that the military is completely inept at video games, forcing the protagonists to step in. As it turns out, the military is deeply entwined with gaming: a large number of personnel play games, the military uses videogame-like simulations for training, and (the British one at least) goes as far as to do Twitch livestreams and attend gaming festivals to booster public relations.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Most people were expecting, and got used to the fact that this ended up being yet another horribly reviewed Happy Madison Productions movie, but went to see the movie anyway for the 80s video game references.
  • Some watched this film just to see Peter Dinklage or Ashley Benson.
• One-Scene Wonder: Some fans admitted that the inclusion of Duck Hunt, of all characters, was a pretty nice bonus. Notably in a coincidental case that occurred a few months earlier, Nintendo themselves had revoked his Scrappy status by having him appear in all his glory in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
• Questionable Casting:
  • Why the hell were Peter Dinklage and Sean Bean in this movie, if not to ride the Game of Thrones hype at the time? The same can also be said about Brian Cox, who never appeared on that show (though Sharpe and Troy fans may be pleased to see Sharpe and Hogan/Odysseus and Agamemnon together again).
  • Kevin James plays the President of the United States. Pretty much every review of the film felt compelled to put up a "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer when they mentioned his casting. Some suspected that he was made the President purely so they could do the joke revealing his career after he complains about how much it sucks, as he otherwise acts exactly the same as any other Kevin James character.
• Rooting for the Empire: Why wouldn't you want to root for an alien race that brings your childhood favorite video game characters to life? The cool visuals and the fact that they're fighting a group of annoying humans led by Adam Sandler also help.
• The Scrappy:
  • Sam, half because he's played by Adam Sandler and the other half because the film seems to be merely a vehicle for acting out a fantasy for his actor (as many reviews noted).
  • Ludlow garnered a lot of hate due to both his constant screaming and his creepy tendencies towards Lady Lisa.
• Shallow Parody: President Will Cooper as a parody of President George W. Bush. He's introduced during a riff on the "The Pet Goat" incident on September 11, 2001. To put it mildly, the parody was no longer timely in 2015. Aside from the general idea of being a buffoon, there was little else to tie the fictional Will Cooper's behavior to the behavior of George Bush Jr.
• Squick: Q*Bert becoming a human woman and then having sex with Ludlow. Sam even lampshades it near the end: "Doesn't anyone find that weird? That was just Q*Bert!" Oh, and they have a litter of baby Q*Berts at the end.
• Strangled by the Red String: Despite Sam being a loser and acting like a creep, Violet is still interested in him for some reason.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Many reviews remarked that the premise (while rather nonsensical) could have made for a fun movie with the MST3K Mantra in full effect. Instead, the film never really does much with the characters.
  • Those who found the concept interesting also found themselves disappointed that the film devotes itself more to being an Adam Sandler vehicle that also doesn't use the film's concept to its full potential.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Peter Dinklage seemed to be fully aware that the movie wasn't good and still gave it his best shot. Ham and Cheese also applies, given that his character is a Boisterous Bruiser.
• Uncertain Audience: Meshing the low-brow comedy of Adam Sandler and relying on 80s games and/or references is not a combination with wide appeal; gamers wouldn't like the low-effort jokes or appreciate how they are stereotyped as losers and archetypal basement dwellers. Fans of 80s games specifically would generally be far too old to have any interest in the film's style of story; fans of the low-brow Adam Sandler style of humor would be alienated by not getting references to the various 80s games from before their time. Additionally, the script dismissing modern video games and highlighting arcade games from The '80s as the pinnacle would earn the ire of gamers who would have believed the film was about celebrating where video games got their start, not showcasing that time as when video games were at their most meaningful. The only people who will totally accept the latter are those who really never got past the days when arcade games were high-score-based novelties, especially when out of all examples used for "meaningless modern games", The Last of Us has been acclaimed as a masterpiece by critics and players for its cinematic storytelling and presentation.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Ludlow is supposed to be a relatable lonely Manchild, but that's undermined by the fact he comes off as a complete kook who happened to be right about something for once and an unstable, pathetic lunatic at worst. His crush on Lady Lisa is also meant to be seen as the latter being his One True Love; his actual behavior is more in the ballpark of Loony Fan with Perverse Sexual Lust, something the movie itself jokes about briefly. Not to mention that he gets to have said heroine come to life and fall in love with him for no reason; Q*bert then transforms into her just to give him a happy ending, which again is so insufferable and disturbing to think about that Sam points it out.
• Video Game Movies Suck: Not based on a direct film adaptation to a specific game, but counts by using their characters, Pixels received very negative reviews from critics, and was not exactly well liked by audiences either. It was one of two victims of this trope in 2015 (the other being Hitman: Agent 47, which at least tried to resemble the Hitman series).
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The film overtly features dozens of surprisingly raunchy sex jokes, Family-Unfriendly Death scenes, mild swearing, and various other inappropriate stuff, but that hadn't stopped the film from getting much publicity for children, with outlets such as Nickelodeon featuring promos and tie-ins for the film in the time up to its release. The lack of appeal towards a family audience of parents who know better are likely major contributions to the Box Office Bomb failure the film suffered.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The President is a down-to-earth nice guy beset by all sorts of tiny problems (like low popularity ratings). Nevertheless, he is a fundamentally decent guy, enjoys a meaningful relationship with Great Britain, and has an aggressive foreign policy. The film suggests that he is picked upon by the U.S. media because he is not educated or refined, and his disappointing polling numbers receive a boost from a series of high-profile attacks that result from eighty chickens coming home to roost. He's the president you’d most like to have a beer with. Indeed, the actor’s very first scene features a riff on that famous scene of George W. Bush reading the children's book "The Pet Goat" to a crowd of schoolchildren; he is then informed of one of the attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001; he stumbles over words, making it clear that he may not be the most charismatic individual to hold office.

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