Honestly, I'm one to skip out on the 3D option in the theaters, but some movies just really take on new life in the format. The bonus features are on the 2D disc and I noticed the film just didn't come alive visually the way the 3D version did. And watching it at home in 3D actually adds to the film a great deal.
The action is otherwise just visually delightful nods to the video games of old with a gigantic Pac-Man devouring everything in its path, Centipedes and the bugs from Galaga terrorizing the skies, and the main characters literally living out Donkey Kong. Even the aliens disolving humans into tiny blocks as they're beamed up to a mothership seems fatally violent, until we find that those who experience this seemingly intergalactic demise actually survive just fine. While Gad's and Dinklage's material are the most bizarre and crude of the bunch, the rest of the movie is relatively more benign. It's crazy, popcorn-munching entertainment, but it does what it's set out to do: entertain. On the surface, Pixels seems like a mess: a silly plot, an ex-gaming dork as the country's president, an unlikely and convenient chance romance, the world having to rely on nerds to save the day, and a plot that involves aliens resembling classic video games attacking our planet. It's unfortunate that Pixels needed to succumb to his brand of humor, too, because it would have worked far more universally if it had a more accessible (or even family-friendly) comedic approach. Still, it's not quite as crude as Sandler's comedies usually are, but the awkward humor remains and those who don't like that kind of approach are going to have a problem with Pixels.
Josh Gad's character, Ludlow, fulfills the token eccentric, crude loser kind of character, while Peter Dinklage's Eddie is the more popular, arrogant antagonist. Granted, it is rather toned-down compared to most of his PG-13 fare, but his style of comedy is at the forefront here. Sandler's usual schtick is pretty evident here. It's stupid - really stupid - but also so, so much fun. It pokes fun at the disaster movie genre as well as the nerdy game-playing demographic, and just aims to entertain. It's an absolutely ridiculous plot, but it's simultaneously ridiculous fun, and anyone who has an appreciation for classic video games should be able to appreciate Pixels for what it is. As a result, the aliens attack earth with the very video game characters humans created, and mankind must either defeat them or be annihilated. The film Pixels is about an alien race that misread a signal we sent featuring our video games in it into space as some kind of threat. These are games that have stood the test of time and are still fantastic to play. I grew up in the 1980s, so games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Galaga, Burger Time and especially Super Mario Bros were classics we played on Atari, IntelliVision and most significantly for my generation, the original Nintendo. And really, Pixels is a lot more enjoyable than it's given credit for. Sandler has had his own unique movie formula that was big in the late 90s and early 2000s, but he's struggled to find a hit in recent years, and Pixels hasn't done a whole lot to change that. The fact that a film about old, bygone (albeit absolutely classic) video games stars a past-his-prime actor like Sandler didn't help its critical reception or box office returns. Unfortunately for Sony's Pixels, we're ultimately living in a rather post-Adam Sandler movie-watching society. Others are executed really well, yet still have an ingredient in their makeup that does more harm than good for it. Sometimes a plot idea can sound so great on paper but then it doesn't translate as well in execution.
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