Pixels

After a long time, an accessible Sandler movie that doesn't use foul humour, is imaginative and made of rather tasty post-cultural dough. The actors are great in their often self-parodic roles (especially Kevin James) and the story is extremely relaxed, without unnecessary awkwardness and with a minimum of superfluous side-plots. It is just a pity that the potential of the premise remains extremely untapped and that the climactic, visually very convincing scenes of the games’ attacks lack, for my taste, more creativity (as one would expect from Chris Columbus) or a more abundant rush of referential or purely situational humour (as one would expect from Sandler). In any case, 3*, and I wouldn’t mind having another round of Pixels. 60% (13/11/2015)

It doesn't matter that the plot is demented; I was expecting that. But what bothers me is the absence of good jokes, more interesting characters and a better screenplay, which would have at least made a bit of sense. The authors of the film created a world that does not follow absolutely any rules, is terribly inconsistent and Dadaistic, feels lazy and slapdash, and doesn’t bother to explain anything. (27/07/2015)

I like Adam Sandler and I'm not ashamed of it. I look forward to every one of his new movies and I'm curious to see what he will come up with next. Just the idea of old video games is great, even though maybe a little more could have been done with it. But what really got me was the idea of Kevin James as the American president. I enjoyed myself, I laughed, I got what I thought I would get. (17/10/2015)

If you are in your late 20’s or early 30’s and if you had an Amiga, Commodore or ZX Spectrum computer when you were a kid, you will easily identify with the movie Pixels. You see, it’s based on computer games that were designed for these computer systems and that we loved so much when we were kids. The authors turned a simple yet imaginative mini film from 2012 into a two-hour whirlwind of colors, fun and joy from the world they created for the big screen. I can’t help it with the review. I was thinking about five stars for a while actually, but eventually I settled for a solid four-star review. Adam Sandler and his crew (Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad – him most of all, Kevin James) put in a great show packed with catchphrases, which sometimes get lost in translation in the dubbed version, but which will keep you entertained most of the time. And the digital effects are great. Finally, they are used to do the thing they are intended to do. Simply entertain the viewers. (20/08/2015)

Relaxing silliness with a surprisingly tolerable Adam Sandler, skillful direction by Chris Columbus (you can really tell that the film was made by an experienced man with a sense of humor) and a script that could (should) have been at least a little more thoughtful, so I could forgive Pixels even more. I wondered, for example, how one character in the eighties used cheats to play a video game on a coin machine, or that four riders were first absolutely needed to hunt down the giant Pac-Man on the streets of New York, but when after a while - even before the start of the "game" - the group lost one member, it did not matter. Well, what can you do? At least it was quite fun - if only that's how the new Ghostbusters had turned out... (09/09/2016)