‘Pixels’ Review: Mishandled nostalgia

Oggs Cruz

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‘Pixels’ Review: Mishandled nostalgia
'The way it mishandles nostalgia for the sake of commerce is wicked,' writes Oggs Cruz

The premise is quite clever actually. In the 1980s, when humanity attempted to discover intelligent life in other galaxies using the SETI program, they transmitted various cultural icons like television shows, music, and videogames. The transmissions did reach their target. However, they were misunderstood as a declaration of war, so as a result, the aliens, using the videogames that they thought were humanity’s violent expression, decided to invade Earth using the same pixelated videogames.

 

It’s all downhill from there. Chris Columbus’ Pixels is hideous. It is a bad film molded from the germ of a good one. As a result, it looks harmless and generic but gives off a reeking scent of opportunism. It mines on the treasure trove of nostalgia, the same emotion that gave birth to films like Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) or any of Pixar’s movies that deal with the lost charms of childhood. However, the movie does not take responsibility over the emotion and instead smothers it with all its meandering humor and attempts at being cool.

Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Sandler in the middle

At the middle of this mess is Adam Sandler. See, Sandler is an actor that has taken a lot of heat for being suspiciously successful despite the supposed lack of talent. It is an observation that while not totally unwarranted, may be quite inaccurate.

Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Sandler, if taken as a character that his vast filmography has created for him, is actually intriguing. He’s a dork, a man whose awkwardness given the various situations he finds himself in makes him interesting. His best works are in  films where he plays characters that are grossly misplaced but desperately searching for love at seemingly wrong places, such as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (2002) or Peter Segal’s 50 First Dates. (2004)

Sandler however is misused in Pixels. Columbus imagines Sandler as capable of projecting likability while discarding the awkwardness the actor is most famous for. Here, Sandler is a teenage nerd who grows up to be a nobody but gets recruited to help the American government defeat aliens with his videogaming prowess. What is most irksome about Sandler’s character here is that he postures as a cool man underneath his being a loser late in his life. He is a smooth talker, a man capable of heroic things notwithstanding his station in life. He is a trying-hard underdog.

Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Sadly, Sandler looks uncomfortable playing the hero. He is best when he wisecracks and exposes the jerk that he is reining in just because he is starring in a children’s flick. He is abominable when he tries too hard to be inspiring, attempting to represent all the nerds that are actually wishing for that impossible cataclysm just for them to be able to use their useless talents to win all the favors of the world, but only ending up being a gross aberration of the subculture.

Lazily simple

It’s one thing to be simple in terms of plot because it is only in stark simplicity will the other details be expounded. It’s another thing to be simple out of gross laziness. Pixels belongs to the latter category.

In fact, the movie acknowledges this vehement simplicity. Its end credits features a 5-minute animated short that details the entire movie, which spans a little bit under two hours, without the benefit of dialogue and with only pixelated icons to do all the action. Surprisingly, the short has a lot more charm than the entire flick, which is lamentably protracted despite its sparse narrative ambitions.

The movie is structured like a mediocre videogame. Its characters move from one battle to another without the benefit of any rhyme or reason. The scenes are fueled by spectacle. Columbus is excited to showcase all the copyrighted videogame icons he was assemble to do cameos in his film that he neglects logic.

Unfortunately, the spectacles are ruined by a serious lack of soul. The videogames are nothing more than displays. They are ornaments in a story that needlessly propels a hopeless Sandler as a modern day hero. It’s all a waste.

Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Abused memories

Pixels looks and feels like an innocent ride, just another one of those factory-made movies that are worth only the bucks they are able to squeeze out of the hungry families who are looking for erstwhile entertainment to tame their little ones. But the way it mishandles nostalgia for the sake of commerce is wicked. The way such mishandling is done with grave lousiness makes the experience more painful.

Pixels is a waste of time, a waste of inspiration, a waste of pleasant memories. It turns the childhood that has been fostered with delight into a toxic nightmare draped in bright and noisy colors. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema. Profile photo by Fatcat Studios.

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