Chris Columbus' Pixels

[St_Eddie]

So, director Chris Columbus has made a feature length adaptation of this quirky and entertaining short film...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugV6cLgwomo

...it's a pretty darn neat short film, right?

Well, the bad good news is that Hollywood can't leave anything original or decent alone, without ruining it is taking the basic premise of the short film and making it even better by chucking a load of money at it.  Oh, and by having it star Little Nicky and Paul Blart themselves, Adam Sandler and Kevin James.  Still not convinced that this will be a turd of epic proportions a brilliant use of the medium that is cinema?  Well, the following trailer should cement your expectations...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAHprLW48no

It looks absolutely awful amazing, doesn't it?  I reckon that Paul W.S. Anderson is suddenly feeling a lot more competent as a director David Lean would feel extremely inadequate, were he alive today to watch this mind-blowing trailer.  Stanley Kubrick must be rolling in his grave at the sorry state of modern cinema in the aisles of Heaven, at the sheer joy of how Hollywood has grown and only become artistically richer with his passing.

Here's some of the most egregious moments my favourite moments from the trailer...

* Adam Sandler's line of "Pac-man's a bad guy?!" sounds like it belongs in a Trey and Matt South Park trailer; "Adam Sandler thought that he knew his videogame characters but then one day, his world was turned upside down when the videogame characters... turned bad.  Huh-derp-a-derp-a-derp-a-derp-a-derp.  Rated PG-13" is hilarious because it's not what one would expect of Pac-man.  He's the good guy, right?  Wrong!  Who saw that one coming?  I certainly didn't and I now have urine soaked Khakis, as I've quite literally pissed myself from laughing so hard.  Pissy pants are the sign of a true masterpiece.

* "It's just a barrel, how bad could it hurt?!"  WAH WAH WAH WAHHHHHHHH! Less Funny than a clown with terminal cancer.

* When the creator of Pac-man showed up and started walking towards his creation, with that soft playpen background music, it took me all of one second to realise that he's about to get chomped on by his own creation by total surprise when Pac-man bit his hand off!  That's some clever script work!  It defies audience expectations in the most non-existent way shocking way possible.  Also, the fact that that last joke took up a whopping mere 26 seconds of the trailer, would suggest that it's the best "gag" this pathetic looking movie has to offer just one of a hundred brilliant gags in the movie and in all likelihood, they're saving the best jokes for when you're actually sat in the cinema.

I'm sour thrilled in the knowledge that this movie will be a tremendous success, due to people who are keen for a mental masturbation nostalgia fix.

[Old Nehamkin]

The trailer plays like a sort of mediocre CollegeHumour sketch that a friend would show you and you'd watch and do that almost-laughing thing where you blow air out your nose once.

[Blinder Data]

Didn't Futurama have an episode exactly like this?

It looks like a trailer made for a trailer's sake, not of an actual film. Kevin James screaming his way through every punchline, Peter Dinklage acting kooky, a past-caring Adam Sandler...

Likely to be a massive box office bomb.

[Pit-Pat]

$100m budget no doubt, with $40m of that going directly to Adam Sandler as Producer and actor

[St_Eddie]

Didn't Futurama have an episode exactly like this?

Indeed it did and very good it was too...

http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/CTCS505/clips/LostArcade.mp4/view

... rather annoyingly, the above clip is missing my favourite line of dialogue from that segment; "Instead of shooting where I was, you should have shot where I was going to be!"

[Replies From View]

All I can say is that if I was Mr and Mrs Columbus, I would never name any of my sons "Chris".  Straightforward.  It's like Mr and Mrs Cook naming one of their daughters "Captain".

[Steven]

a past-caring Adam Sandler...

You do know Hitler come up through the Thule Society and various other occult groups that dabbled in channeling ascended masters and entities that could relate future? I think he just saw Adam Sandler's career coming and was being overcautious.

[SteveDave]

Could they not afford Jonah Hill but wanted a comical fat man with curly hair?

[Blue Jam]

All I can say is that if I was Mr and Mrs Columbus, I would never name any of my sons "Chris".  Straightforward.  It's like Mr and Mrs Cook naming one of their daughters "Captain".

...and if I was Mr and Mrs Colon I would have changed that unfortunate surname by deed poll before inflicting it on poor little Cristobal.

Saw the trailer for Pixels today, I had high hopes after seeing the posters but those hopes were dashed by the words "Adam" and "Sandler" and now the trailer makes it look like a massive predictable tropey wasted opportunity. I can't decide if it looks like it'll be fun despite all of the annoying bits or if they'll just be too annoying to ignore- it could be like The Phantom Menace but with a whole army of Jar-Jars Binkses.

[Beagle 2]

Hahahahaaaaa Jesus Christ, this looks fucking terrible. You can't dress it up as a comedy and get away with it. Good grief.

[Junglist]

I've just watched this. It is the worst thing since The Holocaust and the final, end shot reveals it to be a horror film of monumental proportions. Its a solid 8/10.

[Junglist]

Seriously that ending

Spoiler alert

Q*Bert transforms himself into hot woman gaming character that one of the nerds fancies, they mate and she gives birth(?!) to baby Q*Berts.

[close]

[Small Man Big Horse]

I kind of want to see it now given your response. It only took $22 million in it's opening weekend, and so has officially been deemed a flop in Hollywood USA already, so at least a sequel's extremely unlikely now, and there's been a few "Is it over for Sandler?" articles online.

[Junglist]

It really holds nothing for anyone. Older gamers will get the slimmest whiff of nostalgia ("Oh I remember that character") and the younger ones won't have a clue what's going on. I watched a cam (actually not a bad copy) because this doesn't deserve any money, and the only laugh in the theatre it was recorded in came when Q*Bert acted like a hyperactive three year old.

[BritishHobo]

The whole thing's baffled me. I thought a daft big-budget action-comedy with huge arcade game characters being fought by a team including Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad and directed by Chris Columbus could never be awful. There's enough ingredients there that it's pretty hard to make something that isn't at least fun. So the crazy reaction has been really surprising.

[Junglist]

Dinklage is horrific in it, by the way. He hams his character to the max and he's incredibly tedious throughout.

[Bored of Canada]

You know, he was actually trying to make a biopic about India but stumbled into this instead.

[great_badir]

Is there a Steve Buscemi cameo?  I don't see him anywhere in the cast.  Even Grown Ups and Grown Ups 2 are worth it for him.

If he's not in it, I'm not watching.  Even in pirated form.

[kidsick5000]

Adam Sandler has the drawn look of a man going through a rapid weight loss program. His shorts are gaping at the collar. He also looks extremely miserable.

[chand]

I kind of want to see it now given your response. It only took $22 million in it's opening weekend, and so has officially been deemed a flop in Hollywood USA already, so at least a sequel's extremely unlikely now, and there's been a few "Is it over for Sandler?" articles online.

Sandler's been turding it up at the box office for a while, hasn't he? There were some articles around like this one a couple of years back when Forbes declared him Hollywood's most overpaid actor. Though, reading that, despite Jack & Jill and That's My Boy he still turned a profit on Grown Ups 2 even though it got cunted by the critics. So I guess people still think he's worth the gamble.

Pixels looks terrible though, I especially like how careful the trailer is to name Pacman and Donkey Kong in case you didn't know who they were.

[Head Gardener]

if you can get past the annoying voice this is a pretty damning review

[Eis Nein]

Unfortunately, it'll take more than this stiff to stop Sandler's money train. For those that haven't seen it, Red Letter Media looked at his racket

http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag/jack-and-jill/

[Ignatius_S]

I kind of want to see it now given your response. It only took $22 million in it's opening weekend, and so has officially been deemed a flop in Hollywood USA already, so at least a sequel's extremely unlikely now, and there's been a few "Is it over for Sandler?" articles online.

Those articles tend to be complete filler and based on a 'you're only as good as your last film' mentality and would take them with a pinch of salt. If such predications made by hacks are true then Will Smith was finished after Wild Wild West and Tom Cruise's career has come to a halt and will never be in another film at least twice.

As mentioned a little while ago, one reason that studios were happy to go along with the inflated budgets for Sandler's films is because, far more often than not, they were profitable. However, they're now viewing such budgets a lot more critically and that's a big reason why he signed the Netflix deal – the first film, a comedy Western, was originally intended for a studio, which pulled out over concerns over the cost. It should be said that Westerns are quite a niche genre now and there have been two high-profile flops, The Lone Ranger and the Seth MacFarlane turkey, so arguably it's a case of the studio not being convinced about a project, rather just because it's Sandler.

Another recent Sandler film, The Cobbler, had monster flop written all over it and I believe was film in Stink-O-Vision but he's had some recent successful films (e.g. Hotel Transylvania and Grown-ups 2). Also, there was a terrible film he did with Jennifer Anniston on a modest budget (practically shoestring for him) that received very little marketing and was mugged by critics, but which made a very decent profit for the outlay. Until the Netflix films get released (at the very least) career obituaries are a little too early to write.

[Cuntbeaks]

The pixellated effect reminds me of a rigorous DMT trip i once had.

[Noodle Lizard]

Will Smith was finished after Wild Wild West and

Jim West, desperado
Rough rider, no you don't want nada
None of this, six-gunnin this, brother runnin this
Buffalo soldier, look it's like I told ya
Any damsel that's in distress
Be outta that dress when she meet Jim West

It's a good film!

[madhair60]

You see Will Smith's dick and balls in that.

[Noodle Lizard]

Any damsel that's in distress
Be outta that dress when she meet Jim West

Fuckin' A right she would be!!

[checkoutgirl]

Sandler's been turding it up at the box office for a while, hasn't he? There were some articles around like this one a couple of years back when Forbes declared him Hollywood's most overpaid actor. Though, reading that, despite Jack & Jill and That's My Boy he still turned a profit on Grown Ups 2 even though it got cunted by the critics. So I guess people still think he's worth the gamble.

It's all about ingredients for me. As long as Sandler sticks to between 40 and 60 million budgets (usually pocketing half of the budget for himself) and the plot is simple slapstick comedy with knob gags and fart jokes his films will usually at least break even or make a nice enough profit. He's made about 30 films and they have taken in about 3 billion so he averages 100 million in revenue per picture. Pixels has made about 100 million but the problem is the thing cost well over 100 million including advertising etc. That's the mistake. Also this film is high concept and Sandler is not a high concept guy. He's low concept or no concept if anything. The film was too expensive. There must be a few million hardcore Sandler fans out there. Or maybe his pictures profit from new generations of people who haven't yet realised how bad he is.

He's actually still sort of profitable but you're definitely right about him being a bit of a gamble. That's where past glories and aggressive management come into play. Sandler will now go back to his usual cheap shot comedies that cost 50 million to make with 30 million of that going straight into his bank account.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Why is one of the aliens a Smurf? Smurfs aren't classic game characters.

I do like the effects. They look quite cool. Not enough to actually watch the film, though.

[SavageHedgehog]

There was a Smurfs game in that era, but as far as I can tell it wasn't in arcades.

I suspect the real reason is Columbia/Sony made the two recentish Smurfs live action/animation films, and are working on an animated prequel/"reboot" for 2017.