By this point, I think we can all agree that Adam Sandler‘s ceiling is nowhere near the Waterboy man-child persona he built so much of his reputation on, and is actually a profoundly talented actor whose comedic chops are as robust as his dramatic ones.
More interesting, however, is the fact that, in spite of his talent, Sandler is quite readily given a pass for the aforementioned Waterboy-esque nonsense. This is primarily because he makes no secret of the fact that his priority with his movies is taking care of his friends and family first and foremost, and even if that gives us things like Grown Ups, that’s something to be admired.
But, despite what the Netflix charts will have you believe, Sandler absolutely, positively does not get a pass for Pixels, and not just because it’s a complete faceplant of a sci-fi action comedy.
Per FlixPatrol, this day of Oct. 17 has seen Pixels hold steady in fourth place on Netflix’s Top 10 film charts in Canada. It stars Sandler as Sam Brenner, a former gaming prodigy whose Donkey Kong tournament footage (as well as other relics of the 80s gaming scene, and the 80s in general) was launched into space in the form of a time capsule in hopes of making contact with alien life.
They do indeed make contact with alien life, but the aliens take the message as a challenge, and proceed to launch an attack on Earth using classic video game characters and setups. As a decorated joystick veteran, Sam is recruited to help do away with the alien threat.
I’ll give it to you straight. Pixels is bad, but not entirely in the way that its five Golden Raspberry nominations would have you believe. This is a movie about aliens attacking Earth using Galaga and Pong; it was never going to get any mileage out of performances or plot, and while it absolutely could have done with more joy and less misogyny, Pixels has a strength whose under-utilization proved to be its true downfall. That strength was its ability to understand games.
Growing up in the 80s, Sam understands that games aren’t simply escapist endorphin farms, but challenges with mechanical tensions that he has to engage with intellectually. This is expressed throughout the film as he takes it upon himself to fight Centipede, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. He knows the patterns, he knows the win condition, all he has to do is execute it.
But, importantly, it doesn’t write off modern video games either. Matt Lintz portrays Matty, a child character and the son of Sam’s teammate Violet, and who’s quite into video games himself. He is, of course, more of a The Last of Us guy than Space Invaders, and when Sam asks about how The Last of Us works on a mechanical level, Matty simply says something to the effect of “You’re the guy, and you try not to die.” This advice proves crucial in Sam’s final fight against Donkey Kong.
Sandler’s failure to lean into the world’s widespread relationship to gaming is Pixels‘ worst failure by some distance. Between the traditional intellectual side and the more modern emotional side of gaming, there’s an utterly fascinating space to play in there, and Pixels is decidedly aware of that space in a way that no other film is. Unfortunately, it has neither the compass nor the goalposts to pull off anything close to what its premise is worthy of.
But it’s enough to keep its verb-centric competitors at bay. Scream — the 2022 slasher film that very much had the compass and goalposts to not only pull off its metatextual mission, but arguably maintain it across an entire franchise — is chilling and killing in ninth place.
Elsewhere, Sing — Illumination’s charmingly competent romp about a group of ragtag, musically-gifted animals who put on a show for their city, all while celebrating what it means to be seen for who you are — takes center stage at fifth place.