Pixels

Summer movie season is usually fraught with high adrenaline, big-budget, explosive types of films. We've seen several this summer already: "Jurassic World", "Terminator Genisys", "Ant-Man", Mad Max: Fury Road" and "Tomorrowland", and we haven't seen the end of these films, which is why we have in the offing "Pixels".

As kids in the 1980's, Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler), Will Cooper (Kevin James), Ludlow Lamonsoff (Josh Gad) and Eddie "The Fire Blaster" Plant (Peter Dinkage) saved the world thousands of times--at 25 cents a game in the video arcades. Now, they're going to have to do it for real. In this story, when intergalactic aliens discover video feeds of classic arcade games and misinterpret it as a declaration of war, they retaliate and attack Earth using the video games as the models for their assaults. And now, U.S. President Cooper must call on his old-school arcade buddies to save the world from being destroyed by PAC-MAN, Donkey Kong, Centipede and Space Invaders. Joining them is Lt. Col. Violet Van Patten (Michelle Monaghan), a specialist supplying the arcades with unique weapons to fight the aliens.

Others to round out the cast are Matt Lintz as Matty, Violet's son, Brian Cox as Admiral Porter, Sean Bean as Cpl. Hill (SAS officer), Jane Krakowski as First Lady Jane Cooper, Dan Aykroyd as 1982 Championship MC and Affion Crockett as Sgt. Dylan Cohan.

This was deftly done and rapid-paced in its staging by director Chris Columbus ("Adventures in Babysitting" '87, "Heartbreak Hotel" '88, "Home Alone" '90, "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" '92, "Mrs. Doubtfire" '93, "Stepmom" '98, "Bicentennial Man" '99, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" '01, "Rent" '05, "I Love You, Beth Cooper" '09, "Applebaum" (TV movie) '12). He works well with preposterous premises and characters, so when this project came his way, he was a natural. It was written by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling based on a screen story by Herlihy which is based on a short film by Patrick Jean. As a fantastical storyline, this certainly has potential of an interesting plot, but the writing was haphazard in its delineation. Typically Sandler is involved with the writing process of his films, so they have a tendency to be mediocre at best, but with this film, he did not involve himself with the writing, which actually made it better. But, com'on, Sandler's production company, Happy Madison Productions was one of the producing companies as was he one of the producers, so one has to conclude that he influenced how this script was going to unfold. It definitely follows the same pattern as the films Sandler writes. As far as the visual effects are concerned, SPI (Sony Pictures Imageworks) and Digital Domain, who created the brunt of the visuals, were seamless, but one has to know this before you walk into the theater.

If you want to see a typical summer flick, with all the trimmings--craziness, high adrenaline, big-budget all in a nifty 3D format, this is the film for you. But if you're looking for more storyline, acting and writing, you might want to skip this, because you'll get lost in all the silliness. Break out the popcorn!

Out of 4 Stars: 2.5                               Rated: PG-13                              106mins.