Pixels

As a feature, Pixels suffers from a fatal flaw — while the short film upon which it was based supplied a novel and intriguing premise, Adam Sandler and company attempted to graft nostalgia for their early-’90s heyday onto ’80s arcade culture, creating an anachronistic paradox that leaves the film with no clearly intended audience. Much of the humor and storytelling in Pixels is clearly engineered for a young audience likely to be only passingly familiar with both Sandler’s oeuvre and the specific video games that provide the script’s conceit — the end result being tonal confusion and ineffective pandering that will disappoint both children and adults. While the film seeks to take millennials down memory lane, it fails to root itself firmly in the traditions it uses as window dressing in favor of dumbing down every joke and plot point to something that might only pass for a third-grade level in a school with very low standards.

The 2010 short that provides the basis for Pixels, written and directed by Patrick Jean and clocking in at just under three minutes, effectively and efficiently depicts the ramifications of classic arcade-game characters invading (and destroying) the Earth. Happy Madison’s 2015 reimagining takes this fertile starting point, strips out everything that made the original interesting, and replaces it with a misappropriated plot from a 2002 episode of Futurama in which Sandler and company’s dim-witted gamers are called upon to save the day. While Chris Columbus’ direction is competent, he manages affairs with the cynical detachment of a studio-era journeyman. The script plays as though some nameless exec took a fully developed story and forced it through a standardized three-act-structure cookie cutter, resulting in perfectly timed act breaks at the expense of character development and narrative cohesion. Every turn in the story feels arbitrary and yet somehow still heavily telegraphed. That might have been forgivable in a film aimed at children were it not for the fact that all of the characters are broadly stereotypical and none of them particularly likable.

Sandler stars as Sam Brenner, a 1982 video game championship runner-up who peaked too soon and has fallen on hard times — a metaphor so apt that it had to be addressed in the script. In a particularly telling exchange early in the film, Sandler says to Kevin James’ President (?!) Cooper, “What are we doing? We’re too old, it’s just gross, already.” James and Sandler do indeed seem worse for wear, their comedic timing having clearly lost a step (or more) over the years. The supporting cast fares little better, with Peter Dinklage attempting to breathe life into his performance as Eddie “The Fire Blaster” Plant before inevitably succumbing to boredom. Josh Gad also tries to make a go of things, but enthusiasm alone can’t make up for his awkward delivery of the toothless material he’s been given. It’s disappointing that our protagonist and his allies are all presented as stereotypically “nerdy” losers. It’s even more damning that only two women are given significant roles, both of which are ostensibly geared toward creating strong female characters on paper but fall apart as soon as those characters speak. It’s a sad film indeed in which the best performances come from Sean Bean and Brian Cox expressing exasperated disbelief — possibly in the context of the script, but more likely at the ludicrous job their respective agents talked them into.

In a recent interview, longtime Sandler writer Tim Herlihy confessed that the rewrite process on this film “taught [him] to be lazy and quick.” Pixels does indeed strive for comedy, but the jokes that land are few and far between, relying instead on flaccid and predictable action set pieces that will likely lose their impact when not viewed in 3D. Viewers can save themselves 100 minutes of tedium by showing up as the credits begin to roll, under which an 8-bit rendering recounts the entire story more capably than the preceding film. Better still, stay home and watch the short. Rated PG-13 for some language and suggestive comments

Now playing at Carmike 10, Regal Biltmore Grande.