Me and my best friend get each other gag gifts every Christmas. This year, he got me an autographed picture of the host of Restaurant Stakeout. I got him Pixels on DVD. He made us watch it. I think it's fair to say that this year, he won 2-0.
Imagine you're the kind of 8 year old boy who steals his sister's laptop and uses it to Google 'Ben 10 big boobies', and you're daydreaming at school about how cool it would be if you could somehow save the world by having above-average skill at Pokémon. Pixels is that, plus Adam Sandler, so somehow even worse than the premise sounds.
In his childhood, Adam Sandler loses to Peter Dinklage at Donkey Kong in an arcade tournament, and it's a minor detail, but just to emphasize how little anyone involved in this film gives a shit, the Game Over screen that Adam gets is the fucking victory screen from Level 3, where Mario beats Donkey Kong, but with 'Game Over' pasted over it. Footage of this is shot into space to educate aliens about our pop culture and blah blah blah, years later, aliens attack Earth with video game references. Luckily, President Kevin James - wait, what? Kevin James? A clearly incompetent TV personality with no applicable skills somehow gets elected to - y'know, never mind, I can see it.
They're joined by Michelle Monaghan, a US government... person, who Adam was conveniently installing a TV for while comforting through a drunken break-up when this started, and Josh Gad, who runs around and screams a lot and fantasizes about a video game character named 'Lady Lisa' and later when they win a game against the aliens they're awarded Q*bert as a trophy and at the climax - poor choice of words - Q*Bert transforms into Lady Lisa because, erm, why not, and then Josh Gad has sex with Q*Bert and they raise a family of Q*Berts and everyone hopes you didn't notice that the second-billed female actress has no lines and is literally a trophy.
Peter Dinklage also returns to help, but it turns out that he's a cheater! Rather than Adam Sandler being not literally the best person in the world at video games, it turns out that he only lost because Peter cheated on... a Donkey Kong arcade machine? Huh. He also cheats during a Pac-Man sequence, in which he is chasing Pac-Man in a real, physical car. So his cheat codes are so powerful, he can teleport real-life vehicles at will. I repeat; Huh.
The two false-positives I'd heard about this film are the CGI and Peter Dinklage. The CGI is technically impressive, but since Adam, Kevin and Josh aren't really suited for action scenes, they mostly just slowly walk forwards, shooting plastic guns at CGI enemies. And I love Game of Thrones, but Peter's performance and lines are just as embarrassing as everyone else's.
In summary, if anyone can think of a better gag gift for next year, I'd be grateful, because I really don't want to sit through this again.
Just As Bad As You Heard It Was
Me and my best friend get each other gag gifts every Christmas. This year, he got me an autographed picture of the host of Restaurant Stakeout. I got him Pixels on DVD. He made us watch it. I think it's fair to say that this year, he won 2-0.
Imagine you're the kind of 8 year old boy who steals his sister's laptop and uses it to Google 'Ben 10 big boobies', and you're daydreaming at school about how cool it would be if you could somehow save the world by having above-average skill at Pokémon. Pixels is that, plus Adam Sandler, so somehow even worse than the premise sounds.
In his childhood, Adam Sandler loses to Peter Dinklage at Donkey Kong in an arcade tournament, and it's a minor detail, but just to emphasize how little anyone involved in this film gives a shit, the Game Over screen that Adam gets is the fucking victory screen from Level 3, where Mario beats Donkey Kong, but with 'Game Over' pasted over it. Footage of this is shot into space to educate aliens about our pop culture and blah blah blah, years later, aliens attack Earth with video game references. Luckily, President Kevin James - wait, what? Kevin James? A clearly incompetent TV personality with no applicable skills somehow gets elected to - y'know, never mind, I can see it.
They're joined by Michelle Monaghan, a US government... person, who Adam was conveniently installing a TV for while comforting through a drunken break-up when this started, and Josh Gad, who runs around and screams a lot and fantasizes about a video game character named 'Lady Lisa' and later when they win a game against the aliens they're awarded Q*bert as a trophy and at the climax - poor choice of words - Q*Bert transforms into Lady Lisa because, erm, why not, and then Josh Gad has sex with Q*Bert and they raise a family of Q*Berts and everyone hopes you didn't notice that the second-billed female actress has no lines and is literally a trophy.
Peter Dinklage also returns to help, but it turns out that he's a cheater! Rather than Adam Sandler being not literally the best person in the world at video games, it turns out that he only lost because Peter cheated on... a Donkey Kong arcade machine? Huh. He also cheats during a Pac-Man sequence, in which he is chasing Pac-Man in a real, physical car. So his cheat codes are so powerful, he can teleport real-life vehicles at will. I repeat; Huh.
The two false-positives I'd heard about this film are the CGI and Peter Dinklage. The CGI is technically impressive, but since Adam, Kevin and Josh aren't really suited for action scenes, they mostly just slowly walk forwards, shooting plastic guns at CGI enemies. And I love Game of Thrones, but Peter's performance and lines are just as embarrassing as everyone else's.
In summary, if anyone can think of a better gag gift for next year, I'd be grateful, because I really don't want to sit through this again.