Pixels Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Pixels Blu-ray Movie Review

Let the nerds take over!

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 16, 2015

Does the old 80s argument of "but the game will improve my hand-eye coordination!" still hold any water? Do today's parents -- those who grew up on the NES and Genesis consoles -- still buy that line from their own kids who, instead of jumping with Mario and sprinting as Sonic, are scaling impossible obstacles in Uncharted on the PlayStation 4 or blasting aliens in Xbox One's Halo 5? Heres hoping the answer is "yes," even if today's games are a bit more, uh, "mature" than stomping on cute little Goombas or making a mad-dash to the next set of rings. Besides, who knows if there will ever come a day when Greek Gods need slaying or the Locust pop up from out of the ground. It'll be gamers on the front line (and, in truth, they already are) with all that hand-eye coordination leading the charge to victory. Director Chris Columbus' (Home Alone) Pixels plays on that idea and takes it to its most literal yet illogical extreme when gamers must play the game in real life in order to defeat an invading alien force in what is sort of like a real-world take on The Last Starfighter and Tron. The movie is cute and fun. It works well enough and looks amazing -- really, the pixelated destruction and massive scale are spectacular -- but it always feels like greatness is within arm's reach rather than firmly grasped from the get-go.

Pac-Man: friend or foe?

Young Sam Brenner (Anthony Ippolito) is a natural in the arcade. He's able to see patterns in the games and instinctively understand the mechanics, allowing him to dominate everything from Pac-Man to Galaga. He enters a national championship tournament but finishes behind Eddie Plant (Andrew Bambridge), a feisty, self-centered player who brings more than skill to the controls. Years later, Sam's (Adam Sandler) talents haven't taken him very far. He's doing home theater install work, but his chubby childhood friend William Cooper (Kevin James) has grown up to be President of the United States. When a U.S. military installation in Guam is destroyed by an alien armada, Cooper calls in Brenner for help. He recognizes the aliens' attack patterns as resembling those of the classic arcade games he used to play. Now, he must team up with an adult Plant (Peter Dinklage), a lonely conspiracy theorist (Josh Gad), and a troubled single mother (Michelle Monaghan) to save the world from oversized real-life versions of classic video game characters.

Pixels tries a bit too hard to toe that fine line between pure fan service and wide appeal. It succeeds in a general sense but winds up favoring the latter more than the former. The result is a film that, rather than stand at the top of the heap in geektopia, plays as just another big special effects Comedy that's good for little more than mindless entertainment, this time with some familiar digital faces thrown in for good measure. Adam Sandler and Kevin James largely follow suit, portraying their characters with just a touch of over-the-top enthusiasm without diving too deeply into potentially audience-alienating geekdom. Sandler is far more believable as a grown-up game nerd than is James as President of the United States, but every "Alien Invasion" movie needs a Bill Pullman type and James fits the part agreeably enough, playing a goofball Commander-in-Chief whose status as the most powerful man of the world seems more a commentary on the voters than it does the office or the character himself. They make for a fun pair (and it's not their first, or even second, go in the same movie) that thrives on the movie's inherent silliness and their ability to work the parts to the movie's general advantage. Peter Dinklage is a real treat as the pint-sized gaming champion, but the movie seemed to miss a great opportunity with his character. Wouldn't it have been great to see him taken out at the end by a Fallen Captain and replaced with a suddenly appearing Nolan North? Oh well, maybe in Pixels 2: The Next Generation (Of Gaming Hardware).

Here's hoping that sequel happens, because there's so much juicy material this movie misses and that would be perfect for a followup. The reliance on classic characters only makes contextual sense given the nature of this movie's plot, but one would think that some greater pool of material might have attracted more viewers and given the movie a more diversely entertaining arrangement. Here's an idea for the sequel: the characters must traverse through various video game worlds, a mashup, of sorts, that's the kind of thing Nintendo should be doing with its Amiibo figures (playing as Pikachu in a Zelda level, running through a Mario level with Little Mac, that kind of thing). But since this is a Sony production after all, have the characters blasting through the worlds of Killzone, rubbing elbows with Ratchet & Clank, racing in Gran Turismo, and doing the things Kratos and Nathan Drake do in the aforementioned God of War and Uncharted games. Heck, one of the main characters could even go all Evil Cole on the group. There's practically an endless string of possibilities, even just taking Sony's own PlayStation exclusives into account. Not only would that be pretty great (if done right), but it could build on the cross-generational theme that runs through Pixels in which Sam Brenner tries to understand the "randomness" of modern gaming rather than the patterns and numbers that made the classics, for him, easy to master.

Pixels Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pixels' 1080p graphics are amazing. The image quality is everything one would expect of a major new release. The digital photography rarely even hints to its origins, leaving behind even a semblance of flatness and glossiness in favor of a beautifully crisp and perfectly defined presentation. Colors are astoundingly vibrant, whether natural hues seen on green grasses, Brenner's orange work shirt, or the myriad of bright, practically neon colors that define the video game characters come to life, particularly when contrasted against the inky black nighttime sky and shadowy corners of the screen. Details are precise. Sony's Blu-ray leaves nothing to the imagination, bringing out the finest little textures in clothes, faces, accents around the home, or little nuances out in the city. Video game characters are so well defined that viewers could pause and count the blocky cubes that comprise them. There's not a trace of noise, banding, aliasing, macroblocking, or other disfigurements. This is a terrific presentation from Sony in every way.

Pixels Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Pixels features a Dolby Atmos soundtrack; this review covers only the "core" Dolby TrueHD 7.1 lossless soundtrack. Even without the Atmos configuration, this soundtrack dazzles. Musical flow and definition are precise, yielding both a wide, all-encompassing presentation that works through every speaker while maintaining flawless clarity throughout the scale, including the sharpest highs and heaviest lows. Action effects are the highlight, however. There's a positive sense of low end depth to the heaviest crashes and clanks and video game booms, not to mention the precision with which debris flies through the listening area. Specialty gunfire is thick and well defined, too. The climactic battle may be the most impressive considering the sheer volume of effects and the weight and depth required of them. All of it, of course, plays with a faultless sonic immersion whereby the speakers practically disappear in favor of the various environments where the action unfolds. Lesser, but no less critical, atmospheric effects impress, whether bleeps and bloops in the 80s arcade, general background chatter in the White House, or casual outdoor elements. Dialogue presentation is excellent with a grounded middle placement. Reverberation is hit-or-miss, however. While there's a nice sense of surround-inclusive echoing in chapter 14, there's practically none in chapter seven, where it's all strangely contained in the center. It's the only real disappointing moment of an otherwise brilliant soundtrack from Sony.

Pixels Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Pixels contains a handful of featurettes, a music video, and a photo gallery. A UV digital copy code is included with purchase.

• Making of/Special Effects/Scene Recap Featurettes (1080p): Most of the disc's extras simply take a look at various video game characters (including the original Dojo Quest character "Lady Lisa" played by Ashley Benson), their place in the movie, and making their scenes both practically and digitally, all intertwined with clips from the movie. Included are Pac-Man (4:32), Donkey Kong (4:07), Centipede (3:36), Galaga (3:33), Dojo Quest (4:20), and QBert (2:32).
• God of the Machine (1080p, 1:36): An all-too-short look at Toru Iwatani's personal history and role in the film.
• Music Video (1080p, 3:59): Game On by Flocka Flame ft. Good Charlotte.
• The Space Invader (1080p, 1:40): A short look at a Space Invaders high score player who won a part in the movie.
• Photo Gallery (1080p).
• Previews (1080p): Additional Sony titles.

Pixels Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Pixels is a movie that should be goofy fun, and it is, for the most part, but one -- gamers, particularly -- cannot watch and think of all the missed opportunities to make it something special. Even with the limited pool of classic video game characters, the film feels a little limited and, frankly, aimed more at the thirty something crowd that grew up on them rather than the younger crowd that grew up in the open worlds of Grand Theft Auto and the like. Still, Pixels offers up healthy fun. It errs on the side of mass appeal goofy, and it's so vapid that anyone who's seen the trailer has practically seen the entire movie. There are no real secrets or surprises, just a run-of-the-mill Comedy-Disaster-Alien Invasion movie that replaces generic bad guys with the arcade favorites of the actors' youths. For mindless fun, Pixels satisfies, but there's a lot of room for improvement and growth if the franchise continues, and here's hoping it does, because the core idea is terrific and there are plenty more video game characters to employ. Sony's Blu-ray release is unsurprisingly fantastic, offering reference video and audio. Supplements aren't worth much, but the entire package earns a recommendation.