Game over for Adam Sandler? BMAF go to see Pixels

Recently we defended Tom Cruise in our blog and whilst we are not taking credit for it, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation was a box office smash

Someone else who also seems to be disliked as much as liked is Adam Sandler, who entered this Summer’s crowed Box Office with Pixels based on a short feature, it’s premise certainly sounded fun, classic arcade games come down from above to attack and take over Earth

Critics have slaughtered this film and whilst we here at BMAF love some of Sandler’s films, Big Daddy, the Waterboy, Happy Gilmore and probably our favourite romantic comedy The Wedding Singer, it is fair to say he has not been at his best, That’s My Boy, Jack and Jill, Grown Ups 2, Blended have all passed us by, never being truly awful but not fantastic either we’d been quite happy to see them on TV, in fact the last time we saw Adam in the flesh (we did hear him in Zookeeper & Hotel Transylvania) in a cinema was in 2011’s Just go with it (another of his film’s we enjoyed for the record) but with Chris Columbus directing who has a great track record of family friendly box office hits Harry Potter and Home Alone to name 2 we thought Pixels was worth a risk

We have to say we enjoyed it, we had fun and we enjoyed the nostalgia of classic games such as Pac Man taking over the world, the film plays like the Stay Puft sequence from Ghostbusters and yes you do need to leave your brain at the door but it is fun, in fact the only issue we had was we were made to believe that Kevin James could be the president of the USA =)

The storyline is simple enough, as children Bremner (Sandler) and Cooper (James) are big arcade fans and enter a competition to find the best players, Bremner loses in the final playing Donkey Kong to Eddie (Peter Dinklage) and would appear to lose all confidence in himself and ends up working as a TV installer, but still best friends with Cooper who is now the president of the USA, he is called in when what looks like an army base is attacked by Galaga, a classic arcade game

As part of the competition they entered as kids, footage of them playing was sent into space and aliens have taken this as a declaration of war sending down classic arcade games to attack earth, Bremner and Cooper team up with another friend of their childhood Ludlow (played by Josh Gad) as well as releasing Eddie from Prison  to help the army defend us led by Admiral Porter (Brian Cox) Love interest is also provided in the form of Michelle Monaghan as Violet, a soldier who falls for Bremner

Needless to say the film ends with a finale where Bremner has to face Donkey Kong again, can he win this time, you can probably guess but if you like Sandler’s sense of humour you will enjoy Pixels

What did you think, feel free to let us know and why not like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/barkingmadaboutfilms