Pixels (2015)

Elevator Pitch: A couple of friends, Sam and Will,  get into the arcade game championships in 1982, and later in adulthood Will becomes President of the USA and Sam becomes a home cinema system installer in Washington. But when the world is attacked by aliens using video games as templates for their weapons, the President drags the nerds out of retirement to take the attackers on.  Despite training some super soldiers they still have to do the job themselves with light powered weapons developed by a female colonel who is one of the President’s advisors, and a possible love interest for Sam.

Content: Quite a bit of time spent at the 1982 Arcade Game championships. Sam is contracted to install a home cinema in the house of a divorcee and thinks he has a moment with the woman – mistakenly. The nerds deal with the alien attacks which relate to different types of arcade game, and if the attackes are successful the buildings etc are reduced to pixels. Some people are abducted into the alien spacecraft. The final Pac-Man attack which results in the players chasing though the streets of the city in Minis is the climax – almost.

A View: My wife, who in lockdown has joined me in viewing some of the movies, thought this was terrible. She agreed with the critics who universally panned it, as they do every Adam Sandler film, except for “Punch Drunk Love” and now “Uncut Gems”. But as usual it made money, despite being much more expensive than the usual Happy Madison outing.  It was handy having one of the gang becoming President and that Sam is working in Washington. It got one star from Rotten Tomatoes and the film and the whole cast were nominated for Razzie awards – and won, but what the hell, it was not that bad.

Additional Info:  Actually a 3D pixel is a voxel, so possibly the film should have been called “Voxels”, but as some have claimed, since the medium of cinema is 2D, even the voxels are really pixels!