Pixels (2015)

Pixels (2015)

Director: Chris Columbus

Cast: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Dan Aykroyd

Currently, it feels as if people are programmed to hate any Adam Sandler film released, even without having seen it. They’re prerogative is that Adam Sandler no longer makes “good movies”. Nowadays, you can’t read a review for an Adam Sandler film without it centering around how much Sandler sucks now and how he hasn’t made a good movie in eons and blah, blah, blah. I’m not into hating for hates sake, which is what is apparently happening with Sandler, it’s this hive like mentality of hatred towards Sandler. Where does the hatred stem from? Probably from the string of bad movies he’s been making. The last torturous one I saw was Jack and Jill (2011) and that one turned me off from seeing Sandler movies. How did I end up seeing that one in theaters you might ask? Well, I like to give movies the benefit of the doubt, sometimes I come out a winner and discover a film I would have not seen otherwise, but other times, like with Jack and Jill it’s just like“WHYYYYY?!” The way I see it and in Sandler’s defense I will say that we can’t really blame Sandler for making bland family movies, because that’s who he is, he’s the all encompassing actor who makes films that are supposed to appeal to everyone. He’s movies are made to be consumed in mass quantities and in order to do that, the film has to be a certain way. They can’t be too intense, or bloody, or offensive or violent, they gotta have that ‘feel good, nothing bad is going to happen’ vibe to them. Like, don’t take nothing to seriously, you’re here just to have some fun. Let’s just accept that he’s the guy who makes that type of film, that’s who he’s become. He’s gone the way of Eddie Murphy, but in a successful way? My advice is, if you don’t like the crappy pappy movies that Sandler makes, don’t go and see them! Just wait until he works with a good director, gets critical acclaim again and makes something like Punch Drunk Love (2002), his only truly good film if you ask me.

So just how squeaky clean is Pixels? Well, just by way of an example, in one scene when Sandler sees Pac-Man eat the hand of his creator, and Sandler he says “that was some weird….stuff” instead of “That was some weird…shit!” He even pauses before saying ‘stuff’ as if mentally correcting himself saying “nope, gotta keep it PG-13!” But whatever man, you can say “shit” in a PG-13 movie, it’s just that you’re so self censored that you can’t even bring yourself to say shit. The most basic of cusses. It feels as if Sandler is in a censored state of mind even as he films, in other words, no real space to cut loose and go crazy. Feels like there’s no improv and if you have a good comedian on your film, usually that’s where comedy gold is at, the improv. But no, dialog here is clean as a whistle, god forbid word of mouth spreads and a mother ends up saying something like “my kid is not going to see that nasty Adam Sandler movie, he’s always cussing”. So following Sandler’s squeaky clean movie rules, the film will have kids and families, often times dysfunctional families facing problems and overcoming them (like a divorce for example) and Sandler will be sympathetic and kind to the kid in the movie because that’s the target audience. So this is the kind of movie you can expect my friends. A film following a formula every step of the way. Nothing is to be taken too seriously; you can’t invest yourself emotionally because you know nobody will die. Not in a squeaky clean Adam Sandler family movie like this one, so just sit back and watch the fireworks, which is really the only thing that this movie is good for.

Some folks seem to think that this film was based on an episode of Futurama that has a similar premise, but in reality, this film is based on a French short film that lasts only about 2 ½ minutes, it is also called Pixels (which you can see here) and it sets the ground rules for the look and the mechanics of the’ video games come to life’ part of the film. The short makes no sense or meaning, it just shows us a guy putting an old television in the garbage and suddenly from said television all these old video games emerge. Suddenly Donkey Kong is on top of the Empire State building throwing barrels, Pac Man is eating street cars and Centipedes fly through the skies. In the short, the video game characters destroy the city by turning everything they touch into square little pixels, but that’s about as far as the thing goes. It has no story, no villains, no heroes, just a concept which Chris Columbus and Adam Sandler ran with and stretched into a film. And I say stretched because that’s what they did, the films premise is so simple, the story so non-existent, the characters so one note that they had to stretch things out. Pixels feels  repetitive and one note; we fight one video game, beat it, then fight the next one, and they go on and on like this till the end. There’s nothing unexpected here, this is as formulaic as it gets. Worst part? This is the kind of movie in which the trailer has shown you everything. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you know, step by step how this movie is going to go.

What this movie is though is a nostalgia bomb. If you were born in the 80’s and played video games in arcades the way I did, you will feel a shot of nostalgia in your system. I have to admit it was cool seeing a giant Pac-Man eating up taxi cabs and city streets, especially since I’m such a Pac-Man nut! It was awesome seeing a giant King Kong throwing barrels at Adam Sandler, and then there’s this scene where they simply throw as many old video game characters on the screen as they can, so you’ll see Frogger, Q-bert, Paperboy, Centipede, Galaga, Space Invaders…and that’s without counting all the other characters from 80’s pop culture that show up in the film like Max Headroom, Ronald Reagan, Madonna and Hall & Oates. The soundtrack is made up of hits from the 80’s all the way. So in this sense, the movie proves entertaining to an extent, you will be like “Oh there’s Q-Bert!” Still, I think they could have used even more classic video game characters on the film, apparently they could only afford to use a limited amount of characters. Where was the knight from Ghosts and Goblins? Sadly, the novelty of seeing old video game characters on screen is the only thing this film has to offer, the movie itself is just a bunch of empty calories starting by the fact that the villains in this movie are faceless, we never really know who they are because they talk through videogame characters. So suddenly, our favorite old school video games are evil. I mean, I never saw Pac-Man as a bad guy? But there he is eating people up! So yeah, this is yet another film with a weak villain whom we never even get to meet. Pixels is extremely simple and banal that’s all I can say.

Chris Columbus directs this film and it's sad to see him directing such a simplistic film, considering he's actually done decent family films like Home Alone and Home Alone 2, hell this is the guy who wrote Gremlins (1984) and freaking The Goonies (1985)! I would have liked something from Columbus with a little more story put into it, instead the whole film runs on a gag, not really even trying to get us invested. Pixel does have its moments, again, mostly its moments are associated with the appearance of the giant video game characters, but where’s the comedy? It’s not here; Pixels feels like they are not even really trying. I mean, you got all these good actors and comedians in your movie, why not have them throw in some of their own personality, let them improvise, let them put a little of their soul into the proceedings. This is the reason why Ghostbusters (1984) worked so well, it had a lot of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in it, it’s their personalities that bring those characters to life. In contrast, on Pixels Sandler seems to have no personality, he’s got this spaced out, bored look on his face all the time? Like he doesn’t even want to speak? He’s so laid back that he comes of as lifeless. So yeah, I get why people hate on Sandler so much, he’s just not doing anything relevant lately, I hope he gets his mojo back at some point. Still, Pixels isn’t terrible, it’s completely watchable, just not very engaging or hilarious. It’s simply put a very average film. But hey, there’s Frogger jumping and smashing a car into pieces! Cool!

Rating: 2 out of 5 

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)

Title: Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)

Director: Barry Levinson

Cast: Nicholas Rowe, Alan Cox, Sophie Ward

Review:

Young Sherlock Holmes is the kind of children’s film that Steven Spielberg used to produce during the eighties, a time when he really had a knack for making these types of films. I’m talking about films like The Goonies (1985), Gremlins (1984), Harry and the Hendersons (1987), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Hook (1991). The last film that Spielberg produced that captured a similar vibe was Super 8 (2011), and that’s because director  J.J. Abrahams worships the ground that Spielberg walks on. The Adventures of Tin Tin (2011) was a good one as well. Barry Levinson’s Young Sherlock Holmes is the 'forgotten' one of the bunch, it never reached the level of popularity that all these other movies reached during the 80’s and 90’s, but still, I have to say it was a fun ride.

This film attempts to show us the first meeting between Sherlock Holmes and his investigative partner Watson. We get to see their first adventure together. A scroll during the films opening credits tells us that this film isn’t based on any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, but that it is obviously inspired by them. The film was written by director/writer Christopher Columbus before he’d ever directed a film himself. You see, Chris Columbus started out as a writer, and truth be told he wrote a great bunch of children’s films. In fact, he seems to really understand and get the pre-teen demographic very well, he’s the guy who wrote Gremlins, The Goonies, and the awesome animated children’s film Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989), don’t know how many of you guys have seen that one, but I highly recommend it, it is a great escapist fantasy with some wild dream like visuals. It is in my opinion a criminally underrated film! He then went on to direct Adventures in Babysitting (1987) and Home Alone (1990) amongst many other box office successes. So we have a good writer here paying tribute to the beloved character of Sherlock Holmes.

The story for Young Sherlock Holmes is similar in some ways to Guy Ritchie’s excellent Sherlock Holmes (2009) because it is also about a secret cult that exists deep within the bowels of the London city streets. Both films deal with similar themes as well: religion is all about illusions; about making you see things that are not there. In Young Sherlock Holmes, Holmes and Watson investigate why random people seem to be dying out of fear! Apparently people are seeing things that attack them and here’s where the film offers us some of its more imaginative special effects. By the way, it is important to mention that Young Sherlock Holmes excels with its visual effects; some scenes used more traditional forms of special effects like stop motion animation, while other scenes were downright groundbreaking for their time.

In fact the effects work on this film was so groundbreaking that it was nominated for the best visual effects Oscar that year, unfortunately Cocoon (1985) beat Young Sherlock Holmes for the award. In all honesty it was Young Sherlock Holmes who should have taken home the Oscar. Why? Because this film was one of the ones responsible for giving birth to CGI! The film has this famous scene –a milestone of modern cinema really- where a stained glass knight comes alive and tries to kill the vicar of the Christian church. By today’s computer animated standards this scene is child’s play, but back then it was groundbreaking stuff. The scene took the guys at Pixar (who still worked for George Lucas’s Industrial Lights and Magic back then) six months to achieve, and it only lasted 30 seconds! It was the first film to mix live action with a computer generated image. Young Sherlock Holmes along with other films like Rock and Rule (1983), 2010: The Year we Make Contact (1984) and The Last Starfighter (1984) were the cinematic parents of the computer generated visuals that are so popular in today’s films, so that alone makes Young Sherlock Holmes an important film. 

But effects alone do not make this one a worthy watch; the film benefits from a genuine love for its source material. You can tell that Chris Columbus was aware that he was dealing with a beloved character, and so he paid his respects to it by treating the character accordingly. We get to see the first time Holmes wears his famous hat, we get to see where he gets his coat, his pipe, and we get to hear him say “the games a foot!”  a couple of times. There’s little nudges here and there to previous Sherlock Holmes films and books. And then there’s the fact that Nicholas Rowe and Alan Cox fit their characters to perfection. Some have noticed similarities between the Harry Potter books/films and this particular film and I’d have to say the similarities are pretty blatant. For example the story takes place in a school in England; we get two boys and a girl as protagonists, a trio of friends. The teachers in the school form an important part of the story and finally, Christopher Columbus, the guy who wrote Young Sherlock Holmes actually ended up directing the first two Harry Potter films. Who knows, maybe J.K. Rowling was a true fan of this film and was inspired by it to write her books? It wouldn’t surprise me that much. So anyways, that’s it boys and girls, what we have here is an enjoyable adventure film that displays some true love and affection for its source material. Highly recommend it if you want to see a good children’s film with some innovative effects.            

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5