Review: PIXELS

PIXELS  (ACTION-COMEDY/SCI-FI) 
1 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Chris Columbus
Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Monaghan, Matt Lintz, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Jane Krakowski, Dan Akyroyd, Affion Crockett, Lainie Kazan, Ashley Benson, Denis Akiyama, Anthony Ippolito, Jared Riley, Jacob Shinder, Andrew Bambridge
Rated PG-13 for some language and suggestive comments.
105 minutes
Verdict: A dumb and distasteful Ghostbusters-knockoff, degraded further by rampant misogyny and "angry white male" culture, PIXELS may be a technical improvement on some of Adam Sandler's more recent fare, but not to its redemption.
YOU MAY ENJOY PIXELS IF YOU LIKED:
BEDTIME STORIES  (2008)
GROWN UPS 2  (2013)
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM  (2006)
CLICK  (2006)
BLENDED  (2014)

PIXELS desperately wants to be the new GHOSTBUSTERS, but insists on sticking primarily with the Happy Madison Productions bag of "tricks", making an already lofty goal comically out of reach.  In fact, that misguided ambition is one of the funnier aspects of this otherwise dull, dumb and horrifyingly sexist big budget special effects comedy.  To be fair, it's hardly Adam Sandler's worst film (a remarkably low bar set by 2011's JACK AND JILL), and it's actually some of the better fare he's turned out in recent years, but not to his credit nor to the movie's redemption.
Based on an internet short that went viral in 2010, the movie begins with a prologue set in 1982, in which an arcade games championship master of ceremonies played by Dan Akyroyd announces that the tournament, including games such as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede and Space Invaders, will be filmed to include in a time capsule containing images of Earth culture to be launched into space for the possibility of making peaceful contact with extraterrestrial life.  Now in the present day, it appears as if the capsule has been found by an alien race, but they've misinterpreted the video game images as a declaration of war, and are now sending an assault in the form of giant, physically realized versions of classic video games.  The only way to combat these attacks is to play the real life game, so the President of the United States (Kevin James) calls upon his best friend since childhood, Sam Brenner (Sandler), a former Pac-Man world champion who now installs home theaters for a Geek Squad-style company, to advise the U.S. military on how to beat the games.  Brenner puts together a team of "Arcaders", including sad sack conspiracy-theorist Ludlow Lamonsoff (Josh Gad) and former Donkey Kong world champion turned convicted scam artist Eddie Plant (Peter Dinklage), as well as weapons developer/specialist Lt. Col. Violet van Patten (Michelle Monaghan), and as Earth's only hope, they take part in a video game championship with intergalactic stakes.

Director Chris Columbus, returning for his first theatrical feature film since PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF in 2010, is not a great filmmaker, but he at least more talent and puts in a hell of a lot more effort than Sandler's usual go-to hack directors (Dennis Dugan and Frank Coraci), and with the exception of Sandler and James, has put together a pretty decent cast.  The concept even has promise, but the comedy, the characters, and the execution all ranges from tolerable to putrid swill, all led by an unlikable, lazy and detached performance by Sandler.  Sandler's brand of comedy has long been questionable, but he seems largely indifferent here, reading off lines as though someone were holding cue cards for him off-camera.  The only sense of Sam Brenner's character is conveyed through the script, and there's nothing endearing or likable about him.  He's a jerk with undue disdain for the people around him and a victim's mentality as he thumbs his nose any human decency.  Gad is more naturally endearing than Sandler, but unfortunately, even he is hopeless to elevate this material, reduced to playing a hodgepodge of nerd stereotypes lacking in rhyme or reason and alternating between frantic shouting and whimpering.  Dinklage comes off the best here, modeled after real-life Pac-Man world champion (and previous Donkey Kong world champion) Billy Mitchell, who was featured in the 2007 documentary KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS.  Dinklage hams it up to 11, and although most of the stuff he says and does is incredibly stupid, you have to admire the enthusiasm he brings to it.

If PIXELS were fun, it could be written off as "harmless fun", however, it is neither fun nor harmless.  In light of issues involving "Gamergate", the gaming community social movement that has organized serious harassment in the form of hacking and releasing of personal information such as home addresses, and issuing rape and death threats, in response to (primarily women) critics of the rampant misogyny and racism in online gaming culture, this remarkably misogynistic movie celebrating retrogaming feels particularly distasteful.  "Nerd culture" is now mainstream, but PIXELS snidely pits its specifically "white male nerds" against the world of women who don't appreciate them and big men who turn out to be sissies, while Sandler's entitled creep of a character badmouths everybody.  Women come off worst of all, with sobbing recent divorcees ridiculed as "snobby" for turning down a kiss from a stranger, the female lead somehow construed by the movie's point of view into being the judgmental one who just needs to open up to the men who treat her badly, and a sexed-up non-character with zero lines who is literally awarded to a male character as a trophy.  What this guys don't realize is that, to paraphrase a line from THE SOCIAL NETWORK, they think girls don't like them because they're nerds, but it's really because they're assholes.
PIXELS is a terrible movie, but it's not necessarily the most painful terrible movie to sit through.  It's clumsy, wasting the good things it has going for it, about them the better part of its cast, the well-sized budget and a solid premise.  Jumping from one confusingly edited video game set piece to another, the movie is never elevated above a feature-length special effects reel, and is, in fact, downgraded by rampant misogyny and awkwardly stupid jokes.  Oh, and Q*bert is super annoying.  Cue the kill screen.

Images via Sony Pictures Entertainment

Review: ANT-MAN

ANT-MAN  (ACTION-COMEDY/SCI-FI) 
2 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Peyton Reed
Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Micheal Pena, Tip "T.I." Harris, Wood Harris, Judy Greer, David Dastmalchian, Martin Donovan, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence.
117 minutes
Verdict: A disappointingly mediocre entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, pervaded by cheap comedic beats while shying away from the most interesting aspects of its premise, ultimately resulting in the most forgettable and dull installment in the MCU yet.
YOU MAY ENJOY ANT-MAN IF YOU LIKED:
THOR: THE DARK WORLD  (2013)
IRON MAN 2  (2010)
AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON  (2015)
HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS  (1989)
DAREDEVIL  (2003)

ANT-MAN comes with a lot of baggage. Originally announced at Marvel Studios to be directed by Edgar Wright, critically-acclaimed writer/director of SHAUN OF THE DEAD, THE WORLD'S END and SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, it was an incredibly exciting prospect for the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" (MCU) that now includes the superhero series of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers, with more on the near horizon.  Then, during late pre-production in May 2014, it was announced that Wright was leaving the project due to the extremely vague and typical citation of "creative differences", and the air of excitement seemed mostly let out of it.  Wright has maintained a screenwriting credit with his co-screenwriter Joe Cornish, in addition to an executive producer credit, and the action set-pieces (at least, most of them) have Wright's hand in them as they had to be plotted out before everything else, but the director's reins have been handed to Peyton Reed, whose credits include BRING IT ON, THE BREAK-UP and YES MAN.  ANT-MAN is emblematic of a particular problem at Marvel Studios, one that first became apparent in IRON MAN 2 and clashed with writer/director Joss Whedon's vision in AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON; the homogenizing of individual films to meet the needs of the larger story, rather than crafting the larger story around the individual films, and relying on the gimmicks of the system rather than the merits of the story and characters.

In ANT-MAN, comic actor Paul Rudd stars as Scott Lang, a burglar who's just been released from prison and now hopes to start anew by getting a legitimate job and becoming a consistent presence in his estranged daughter's life.  This proves more difficult than expected, and Lang returns to crime, stealing a suit that he discovers contains technology that shrinks the wearer down to miniscule size while enhancing his strength to a superhuman level.  The rightful owner and inventor of the suit, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), makes contact with Lang and with his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), who resents Lang for the potential her father sees in him, they train him to be the superhero "Ant-Man", to best utilize the suit's powers and telepathically communicating with actual ants.  Pym's company, from which he's was ousted years ago, is now run by his old protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), and has now found a way to replicate the Ant-Man technology which Pym has fought to keep secret, and with any luck, Pym will have Lang ready in time to infiltrate the company building and steal the technology before it has a chance to fall into the wrong hands.
ANT-MAN relies more heavily on humor than any other Marvel movie to date, and unfortunately, it also has the lowest success rate in that respect.  With the exception of a few good laughs, the movie is filled with dull and cheap comedic beats (especially involving Pena's annoying sidekick character), and more unfortunately, a few gags with strong potential marred by broad execution.  Likewise, the action typically has more potential than is delivered, smartly written, but lacking the fine-tuning that would be preferable.

Rudd has proven time and again to be a solid supporting actor in comedies like ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY and THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, but he lacks the screen presence and magnetism to lead a film, leaving Douglas, whose character is the more interesting besides, to carry the brunt of the load.  Certainly, Douglas' character is the center of interest in these proceedings, attracting more conflict and possessing more complexity than the others, and where is character goes is more intriguing than even the central protagonist.  The lack of strong, interesting villains in the MCU has been well documented (always excepting Loki, although Red Skull, while lacking complexity, served CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER well), and Darren Cross, aka Yellowjacket, is another villain who is more a plot device than a character, and more unexpectedly, Stoll's mannerisms bring to mind Buster Bluth from Arrested Development.
Rather than a story built around its eponymous character, ANT-MAN is a safe, unremarkable story built around the MCU, laying the connections on thickly, but in a gimmicky sense rather than to advance the larger, multi-film plot in the manner that dragged down IRON MAN 2 and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON.
To be fair, for the average moviegoer, depending on how well they receive the film's humor, ANT-MAN is perfectly pleasant summer entertainment, nothing particularly impactful, but engaging enough in the moment.  In the broader scheme, it's harmless, but in the universe of Marvel films, it's arguably the most apparent symptom yet of the considerable creative flaws in the studio's increasing attempts to gentrify their individual films at the sakes of those films' individual souls.

Images via Marvel Studios

Review: MINIONS

MINIONS  (ANIMATION/COMEDY)

1.5 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Kyle Balda & Pierre Coffin
Featuring the Voices of: Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Pierre Coffin, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney, Steve Coogan, Jennifer Saunders, Geoffrey Rush, Steve Carrell, Katy Mixon, Michael Beattie
Rated PG for action and rude humor.
91 minutes
Verdict: A frantic and dull exercise in strictly brand-based filmmaking that will no doubt amuse small children while parents are forced to grit their teeth.
YOU MAY ENJOY MINIONS IF YOU LIKED:
DESPICABLE ME 2  (2013)
DESPICABLE ME  (2010)
PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR  (2014)
HOME  (2015)
THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER  (2015)

The little, yellow, pill-shaped imps called "Minions", which became the mascots of animation studio Illumination Entertainment and their hugely successful flagship franchise of Despicable Me movies, are absurdly popular, so it was only a matter of time before they got their own solo movie.  The level of cultural saturation the Minions have reached defies reason.  Remember when people posted inane, would-be clever/insightful statements on top of a nature background to social networking sites?  The backgrounds didn't make sense then, and the Minions that now accompany these statements don't make sense now.  You can't walk into a grocery store without seeing these characters on a couple of items, at the very least.  They're on Twinkies, bananas, Swiffer mops, breakfast cereal, McDonald's Happy Meals, board games, Amazon shipping boxes, Tic Tacs, apple sauce and paper towels, and that's hardly the sum of it; this brand is a marketing juggernaut.  Unfortunately, that may be the extent of the Minions' potential, because MINIONS, the movie, is nothing more than dull centerpiece to a massive marketing machine.
With narration by Geoffrey Rush, the shoestring plot takes us back to the very origins of Minions as single-celled organisms in the primordial soup before evolving into the gibberish-speaking, goggle-wearing, yellow creatures, and all throughout the millennia, they've wanted nothing more than to find the best villain to serve, consistently with dismal results.  By 1968, the Minions have made their home in the Arctic and sunken into depression due to their lacking of a sense of purpose, but Kevin, a relatively smart Minion, decides to venture out into the world and find a villainous master for their kind, accompanied by fellow Minions Bob and Stuart.  Arriving at Villain-Con, the villains convention, the Minions land jobs as henchmen for the hottest new baddie on the scene, Scarlet Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock), who wants them to steal Queen Elizabeth's (voiced by Jennifer Saunders) crown for her, and when things go awry, Scarlet tries to destroy them.

The plot is extremely thin, meandering through a series of loosely connected episodes in which the comedy relies very heavily on the title characters' signature gibberish, provided by co-director Pierre Coffin and comprised of a little English, a little French, a little Spanish, a little Italian and a fair bit of nonsensical babble.  Even with a running time of only 91 minutes, there simply is not enough here to sustain a feature film.  The Minions of the Despicable Me films were more like props than characters, used as fodder for slapstick gags, and they do not evolve from that role even as they're made the central focus of the film.  I'd say it's like having the Ark of the Covenant chasing down Indiana Jones, but that actually sounds pretty cool still, and MINIONS is more of a drudge.
Despite her best efforts, Bullock's casual vocals feel wrong in this kind of Looney Toons animation where she sticks out like a sore thumb amongst all the funny voices and even her own character's exaggerated rendering.  On the other hand, as Scarlett's groovy inventor husband Herb, Jon Hamm is the highlight of the film, and mind you, the highlight is Jon Hamm's vocal performance, not Illumination Entertainment's frustratingly static character types.  Of course, the practically non-stop Minion gibberish will drive most parents mad over the course an hour-and-a-half, not to mention the days of imitation by their children.
It's a movie most younger children will enjoy, however, for its bright colors and overall silliness, but even for those who enjoyed the Despicable Me films, it's hard to see what the average discerning adult will find to appreciate beyond the entertainment value for their little ones.  The humor is too broad (lots of 1960s pop culture references like hippies, The Dating Game and Richard Nixon) and even when a premise has potential, the execution never lives up to it.  Most of the genuinely funny stuff has already appeared in the trailers, and the best joke from the trailers doesn't even appear in the finished film.  It's a dull frenzy that fails to justify itself beyond what it truly is: a brazen advertisement for an already absurdly popular brand.