REVIEW

Out in Theaters: PIXELS

Name: Pixels review
Item: Pixels
Rating: 2
Author: Matt Oakes

By Matt Oakes · July 22, 2015

Where to watch: Streaming on Peacock, or rent or buy on digital (updated October 2026)Watch on Peacock · Rent or buy on Amazon · Buy on Blu-ray/4KAs an Amazon Associate, Silver Screen Riot earns from qualifying purchases.

Adam Sandler has been candid about his lack of effort in projects of late. Last year on Jimmy Kimmel Live, he admitted that he chooses projects based primarily on location. Meaning, he takes his paycheck and his vacation and all he’s gotta do is tug on the lever that makes the Happy Madison assembly line run. A nerd joke here, a woman joke there. A dash of silly voices. Fat man slamming into something. Voilà! You’ve got yourself a Sandler movie.

And this is 100% why I don’t see Adam Sandler movies and, more importantly, why they are not screened for critics a vast majority of the time. There’s just no effort present. Just a bunch of buddies grab-assing between margarita hangovers, waiting to collect their checks. David Spade never had it so good. And then there was Pixels, a $110 million dollar effects tentpole film directed by *gasp* an actual director (Chris Columbus of Home Alone acclaim).

Pixels rewinds time to the 1980s when a local arcade opens their doors to a pride of wide-eyed pre-teens. Enter Brenner (later Sandler), a likable enough kid with a natural knack for seeing the patterns in these classic games and best friend Cooper (later Kevin James) an uncoordinated plush doll of a child who can work the crane machine and little else. Brenner dukes it out with megalomaniac midget Eddie (later Peter Dinklage), who’s fancied himself a nickname in “The Fire Blaster”, and the later goes home the world champion.

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Fast forward to modern day and Sandler’s Brenner is a nobody (who didn’t see that coming?) while Cooper is the POTUS. At this early stage, you should already be calling for the head of the casting director. Casting Kevin James as the leader of the free world is like casting Carrot Top to play Uncle Tom in a historical biopic. It makes for hacky laughs and lazy comedy and hacky laughs and lazy comedy alone. Alas, that is what we are in for.

The cast is rounded out by the entrance of a “token woman” in the form of Michelle Monaghan. She’s meant to play Sandler’s combative love interest but the road to their conflict is as rushed as a level-22 Blinky. There’s something about a mistimed kiss and a following slew of insults but it’s hard to justify why a 48-year old man is sparing it out with a woman as if he were a pimple-riddled, hormone-jacked teen. This childish game might have worked in the ghost of Sandler movies past but come on, we’re ready for a new gimmick now. Nothing in their pseudo-chemistry manages to make any sense, least of all Monaghan’s son essentially cheering Brenner on to plow his momma. But remember, this is an Adam Sandler movie, sense comes in short supply.

Monaghan though is admittedly game while Sandler’s just on auto-pilot. James does what James does and Dinklage gets hammier than Porky the Pig (though is still the most entertaining of the bunch). Josh Gad offers up his shrieking, nerd-alert theater affect, proving once and for all just how annoying he is on screen. Unsurprisingly, Brian Cox slips in some of the film’s best one-liners (also the most likely to slip over most audience’s heads) but his character ends up going nowhere fast. Much like Pixels itself.

In the midst of the movie, it’s revealed that one character fails to play by the rules. Pixels also cheats. We can suspend our disbelief long enough to swallow that perhaps Sandler and Gad’s nerd duo is more apt than the U.S. Marines to defeat a gigantic pixelated centipede (because Marines aren’t smart enough to discern patterns) but when they take on a city-swallowing Pac-Man (as the game’s famed ghosts Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde), one will wonder why there aren’t professional drivers employed for the job; Earth’s survival being on the line and all.

There’s cameos by old video game characters the likes of Q-Bert, a pixelated Smurf and OG Donkey Kong, in addition to some new inventions created to titillate regions of the film’s teenage incumbency, resulting in what can only be described as a weird mash-up of 80s nerd nostalgia and modern day Sandlerisms. As someone who’s always been more on the side that’s punching the nerds in the chest, one has to wonder how and why Sandler became Pixels’ representative for a class of humanity that he just doesn’t seem to understand, much less hold any respect for.

And so we must ask: who is this movie for? Who out there wants their past reflected back to them through the lens of Sandler sulking and Kevin James’ sprinkle wars? Further, who is even willing to buy into this casting fits in the least of ways. Columbus manages some minor fun with the block-based effects and crafts some half-decently staged action sequences but ultimately the talent in front of the camera lacks too much oomph to ever get us invested in the final outcome. As Cox’s Admiral Porter nonchalantly says as the alien invaders close in, “I don’t know what would be worse, us defeating them or them defeating us.” Touché Brian Cox. Touché.

CONCLUSION: There’s more effort here than in most Adam Sandler movies but Pixels’ half-baked 80s video-game-cum-invasion-movie still mostly reeks of jack-assery.