Pixels

Dustin: 3 of 5 stars Nick: 2 of 5 stars Average: 2.5 of 5 stars (Woozy canary)

Dustin: In Pixels, man-boy Adam Sandler and President Kevin James do battle with alien space weapons modeled on 1980s arcade games. After aliens discover a pod sent to space with Earth culture and technology, they have interpreted the contents as a threat, and sent our 1980s pop culture back to Earth in weaponized form.

Nick: I remember the day I heard they were making a full-length feature out of a fantastic short film called Pixels (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugV6cLgwomo). I was super excited, and years later it became an Adam Sandler vehicle and all my dreams came crashing to the floor. The jokes and characters are so juvenile I really wanted the aliens to win because they would be more interesting to follow if there happens to be a sequel, and plus I HATE Adam Sandler films. Also I believe Peter Dinklage’s character is based off Billy Mitchell from the documentary King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters, which was a very nice touch since Mitchell may be film’s greatest villain! See that movie instead of Pixels.

Dustin: When I first saw the trailer, I thought, What a great concept. Then they showed Adam Sandler and Kevin James, and I thought, Oh, fuck. Then I thought, I’ll give it a chance. Maybe Adam Sandler will go back to form, like Happy Gilmore or Billy Madison.

I gave this movie a lukewarm positive rating because I thought the pixelated video game aliens looked awesome, and those parts of the movie were good. The story lent itself to the use of CGI. The “plot” was perfunctory. When I saw Kevin James as the president, I thought, Yeah, right. I liked the supporting actors, like Peter Dinklage and that guy who is like the poor man’s Jonah Hill (remind me of his name).

Nick: Josh Gad, the voice of the snowman in Frozen.

Dustin: That’s right. When we saw Frozen before sneaking into Oldboy, I thought the snowman was voiced by Jonah Hill.

Anyway, Adam Sandler was the worst part of this movie. He just looked tired. He doesn’t have that raw energy he had on Saturday Night Live and his album What the Hell Happened to Me? At least this movie had good production value and it looked like some people were trying. But this would have been a better movie if Adam Sandler and Kevin James weren’t in it. Or were only supporting roles.

(Full disclosure: Once upon a time, I was a huge Adam Sandler fan. I liked his early comedies, despite their low-brow nature. I still like What the Hell Happened to Me?, even though one skit is an eight-minute fart joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUvKegVZuRA)

Nick: The only scene where I felt any joy was when our heroes had to be the ghosts to stop the Pac-Men from destroying the city. Beyond that scene I never had any fun, including the CGI from any particular scene. It didn’t work for me, especially in the first scene of Adam Sandler and the army facing off against Centipede. I never played the game, but I assume that the parts of the centipede that are shot burst with a blue flame or something. It didn’t look good to someone who doesn’t know the game. I wonder if non-gamers would feel that way about the whole movie. I recently have been going to a local arcade a lot and have become obsessed with Q*Bert, which I had never played before. What they did with Q at the end made me quite sad.

Dustin: I played Centipede quite a bit as a kid at La Pizza Cellar in Rockaway Beach, Missouri. I loved that game. But you bring up an interest point. Anyone old enough to have played that game is probably too mature for this movie. Even some young whippersnappers like yourself who never had a chance to play the game are too mature for it. The film’s target audience--boys ages 12 to 14--would have no idea what was going on.

Nick: It’s funny that Michelle Monaghan and Peter Dinklage are the two best actors in this film and they have the least amount of screen time. You would think being a better actor would get you the better role. Or you would hope, I guess. What Michelle’s character has to go through in this movie is the definition of horror. Her husband leaves her for a younger woman and she falls apart in front of Adam Sandler hiding in her closet on the floor drinking wine. Oh women… so fragile. And after hating Sandler for two-ish days, she seems to grow a liking to him, and then in another two-ish days shes in love with him. I need to rewatch What Women Want to understand her actions a little better, because maybe I don’t know what they want.

Dustin: I also liked the appearance of Toru Iwatani, the real-life creator of Pac-Man (speaking of casting). The Pac-Man sequence was featured heavily in the trailer, and it is probably the best part. But you’re right about Monaghan’s character arc. It is obvious from the get-go her and Sandler will end up together at the end, and their scenes together just feel like they were included in service of that end.

The most disappointing thing about this movie isn’t really Adam Sandler, just that they could have done better with the material.

Adam Sandler clearly knows how to raise money for a movie. I think as an artist, however, he has bowed out long ego. He should use his business acumen to be a producer and stay out of the creative process.

Nick: Crazy thing I just learned: it only cost $8 million more to make Pixels than Grown Ups 2.  How insane is that?! http://www.boxofficemojo.com/showdowns/chart/?id=sandlerdecline.htm

Instead of trying to make a good movie, they made a film that will make good money. Which it could have if they hired an imaginative director/writer and an exuberant cast, but this was a safer bet for the producers. Which is funny because it's actually not doing well at the box office. Maybe Sandler will stop getting projects he didn't create for himself! We can only hope.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

Dustin: 1 of 5 stars Nick: 1.5 of 5 stars Average: 1.25 of 5 stars (Dead canary)

Dustin: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is the much clamored for (I guess?) sequel to Paul Blart: Mall Cop. A few days have gone by since I’ve seen it, and all I remember was the Wynn resort and something about a heist.

Nick: For the me the movie is not the worst we’ve seen (Tammy), and I honestly didn’t mind the film. I think kids could like it, and I don’t recall a single fart joke, which was quite impressive… in a sense.

Dustin: I walked into this movie expecting to hate it, but I walked away not hating it. I wasn’t sure if I should give it only 1 star, but then I thought, If the best thing I can say about this movie is that I didn’t hate it, then it’s a 1-star film.

Nick: I was thinking before the review if I wanted to go 1.5 or 2, but I went low because although I feel its getting some undeserved heat its still not that good. Some of the pratfalls and gags, the way they were filmed, were entertaining. Such as the climatic fight scene when you have the mall cops accidentally performing stellar fighting moves to defeat the bad guys. It was executed well and had me intrigued.

Dustin: Some of the sight gags were pulled off well, but every joke was predictable. There was not one where I could not have guessed the outcome from the setup. I laughed when he was showing off on the Segway, and then got hit by a car. Even though I could see it coming from a mile off, it was well executed.

Then there were some things that seemed to be the setup to a joke, but didn’t have a payoff. Like when he collapsed from not having enough sugar in his system, then he licked up drips of ice cream from a little girl’s cone, then just got up and walked away. That was the joke. I was expecting him to get comically pumped up with the little bit of sugar. I was almost ready to laugh, but then it just fell flat.

Nick: I chuckled when his body fell flat right before that, and yes the ensuing bit did not work, but the film has little moments strewn throughout that might make a person smile. Like when the granny gets punched in the stomach and instead of getting mad starts to say how she probably deserved it for sneaking up on him. I thought that was funny and well timed. This film has a spirit that makes it hard for me to hate it. It’s super positive, even when Paul or his daughter Maya are sad they turn it around pretty quickly and have a never-ending faith in each other. I never want to see this movie again, but if I was a parent I would not mind my kid watching it.

Dustin: I found it hard to like the character. Part of that is because I just don’t see the appeal of Kevin James. Is he a star? He doesn’t have that indefinable quality that allows an actor to carry a film. But the character just isn’t very likeable. There’s a part where his daughter is upset and yelling at him, and he just sits there nodding while still stuffing his face. It was supposed to be funny, but you can’t really relate to the character, and the tone of the movie wasn’t dark enough to work as a dark comedy where that kind of joke might have felt more at home.

Nick: The jokes at the beginning are very dark and unnerving, yet the film treats them as throwaway jokes. His wife divorces him after six days, and his mom gets hit by a milk truck. I don’t think this is a type of film where you try to relate to a character like any of the past ten Adam Sandler vacations, I mean, movies. They’re just friends having a good time, doing what they love and giving the lowest common denominator what they pine for! Speaking of friends, I quite enjoyed the Saul Gundermutt character and his wife. The character is overdone, but so is everything else in the film and thus you have to accept it. Gundermutt’s hair was like Eraserhead if he was balding from the front, constantly wearing aviators while sporting a wrist brace probably from a bowling injury.

Dustin: I was just about to talk about his mother’s death at the beginning. Yes. She gets hit by a milk truck. It was set up an timed like a joke. Laughing yet?

That’s the problem with a lot of the jokes in this movie--they have a “kicking down” feeling to them. An old woman getting hit by a truck and dying isn’t funny. Comedy works when there’s some kind of juxtaposition that adds irony to a situation. When something happens to a person of high status, it is different than when the same thing happens to someone of low status. For example, it would be funny if Obama slipped on a banana peel, because he holds the highest office in the land and #Obamacare #BlameObama. But if a kid with cancer slipped on a banana peel, it would just be sad. I somehow don’t think Kevin James or Happy Madison Productions understand this distinction.

Nick: Death can be funny but it mostly depends on how it's executed (no pun), but we can debate that some other time as reviewing Paul Blart 2 is too important to be getting sidetracked.  

Dustin: A movie that established itself as a dark comedy could probably pull some of that off. But this movie didn’t really establish a distinct tone, and I think that’s the biggest problem of all. It’s not that it was bad… it was just bland.

Nick: But if it happened at the beginning, and you hadn’t seen the original, would that not be setting the tone as a dark comedy? His life is decreasingly falling to pieces in the first minute of the film, and you have nothing else to set a tone besides all of these horrible things that are played for laughs. I’m not saying its a dark comedy, but if that was the first thing shown in the film then you might consider it a dark comedy… until of course the shenanigans begin. I also have a sometimes dark sense of humor as I often start laughing during horror films when kids get killed off, but that’s because I can’t take it seriously.

Dustin: The tone was set in the opening credits. Other things create mood that set the tone, like the lighting and pacing. This pretty much has the look of a sitcom, so you’re not expecting a woman to die for a laugh.

Nick: Ha! The guy who started the review saying all that he remember is a heist and the Wynn hotel is now talking about the lighting in the first scene!?  

Dustin: I remember how the film looked, but don’t really remember what it was about. I remember he somehow ended up on stage with Cirque du Soleil, but not laughing or enjoying anything. His daughter gets captured by the criminals, and he seems more interested in stopping their art theft than getting his daughter back. I get that some comedic plots are just a hanger to hold up the jokes, but there weren’t really any jokes here.

Nick: I think Blart was trying to get his hands on a piece of art to use as leverage to get his daughter back, which is how that amusing fight sequence I talked about earlier started.

All the jokes come from a place of desperation as if a class clown didn’t make you laugh at first and then continues trying harder and harder, but never getting any funnier.

Dustin: I guess in conclusion, while Paul Blart couldn’t kill this bird--

--he did kill our canary.