Movie Review: Pixels

Have you ever wanted to live one of your favourite video games? In the new movie Pixels they do just that. Except a lot scarier and they’re all 8-bit games (just in case you don’t know what an 8-bit game is, they’re old arcade games like Pac-man and Galaga). Anyways, I hope you enjoy this review of the movie Pixels.

The movie starts in 1982 where a young Sam Brenner (adult played by Adam Sandler) tells his friend Will Cooper (played by Kevin James) that a new building called an arcade has just opened up. So they grab some money and go to the arcade and start playing all the arcade games, and as they are getting all the high scores they decide to go the world championship. This is where they meet Ludlow Lamonsoff (played by Josh Gad) who is great at the games and is into conspiracy theories, but has no friends. In the tournament they meet Eddie “The Fire Blaster” Plant (played by Peter Dinklage) who is also very good at the arcade games and is tied with Brenner at the top. The tournament people decide to break the tie with a game of Donkey Kong, and Brenner loses. After the loss, Brenner and Cooper decide to talk about what they would want to do in the future.

Years later, in the present day, Brenner and President Cooper are talking in a bar or something about similar things they were talking about years ago. Brenner says he has to do a job for his company called NERD and as they leave, the people behind barricades start yelling at Cooper about all his bad decisions as the President. Brenner has lead a disappointing life because he let his loss at the arcade championship define who he was. When strange things attack US Army base in Guam President Cooper calls Brenner in to see if maybe he can help with the situation. This leads to a series of events that are both comical and full of action.

The story plot of the movie I thought was great and the action scenes definitely reminded me of all the 8-bit games from the past. The action scenes in the movie featuring these games were very well thought out and animated. But the thing to remember about this movie is that it is a comedy and to not to go expecting it to be very serious.

The acting was very good in most of the movie, but sometimes I see parts that I think they could have made better in some way or it was a case of slight overacting. But even with these, the movie was great anyways. Adam Sandler did his usual routine of acting just a little bit childish for his character, Kevin James can be counted on for his self put down character, although it was nice to see him in a job position that was more important than what he usually does. Josh Gad had his lovable but loud personality, and even though I have not seen much of Peter Dinklage before, he worked well with them and all the actors played well off of each other.

Overall I would rate this movie 8.8/10 for great comedic acting and story plot with very cool action scenes, even though about half the movie is special effects. But they had to use special effects for the movie, otherwise Pac-Man wouldn’t be destroying New York.