Liking The Emoji Movie last year had a profound impact on my
identity as a cinephile. When everyone else reserved nothing but their choicest
vitriol for the movie, it made me question whether I truly lacked the critical
faculties to differentiate between something with a legitimate heart and
creative spark, and a moronic, cynical attempt to make some money by stealing
somebody else’s ideas. I’d probably have to see the movie a second time to
determine which one it is, but I dare not. At some point I will.
It’s dampened some of my enthusiasm for going back and
seeing other movies widely heralded as turds from recent years. If I liked
these movies too, I’d start to wonder if I were capable of rendering sound
judgments about movies in general.
But Sunday night I faced that fear and watched one with
some obvious surface similarities to The Emoji Movie: the Adam
Sandler-starring, Chris Columbus-directed 2015 flop Pixels.
And I’m glad to say that I hated it.
“Hate” might be a strong word as the movie did not make me
angry. But I did not laugh once, and I grimaced numerous times. “Srongly
disliked” might be a better word as I decided that the movie warranted 1.5
stars rather than 1 or .5. You don’t truly “hate” a movie unless you give it
one star or lower. But 1.5 stars is no kind of endorsement of Pixels, when you
contrast it with the four stars (!) I handed out to Emoji Movie.
And boy did not liking Pixels feel good.
You shouldn’t go into a movie thinking you won’t like it or
wanting not to like it, as that’s not giving the movie a fair shake. It’s also
conforming to your preconceived bias, which is part of the very hivethink I
loathe that led so many people not to like The Emoji Movie. And in fact I do
feel like I went in with an open mind about possibly finding a surprisingly
charming film that was widely misunderstood, like The Emoji Movie. Despite my
acknowledged trepidations.
But it didn’t take long for me to realize that Pixels was
DOA, flat in concept and execution, and unfunny. I was with it through the
opening flashback sequence in which a young version of Sandler’s character is
seen mastering numerous 1982 arcade games while Cheap Trick plays on the
soundtrack. Promising enough. But the moment we thudded into the present day, with
Sandler looking even older and more haggard than I think he was supposed to,
the movie lost whatever potential liveliness it had. Learning that Kevin James
was playing THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, a dim-witted childhood buddy of
Sandler’s who can’t really read, pretty much squelched any hope. Even the
arrival of one of our most charming actresses, Michelle Monaghan, and a true
cinematic/TV treasure, Peter Dinklage, could not salvage the movie.
A paragraph’s worth of qualitative analysis of Pixels is all
I care to give it at the moment, because that’s not the point of this post. The
point of this post is to breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t like all bad things.
And that’s a good thing.
I did think it was funny to compare Pixels with a more
recent cultural touchstone, Ready Player One. The similarities are rather
striking – striking enough that I considered titling this post “Ready Pixels
One.” Both movies deal with how an intimate/obsessive knowledge of 1980s
culture proves key to saving the world. Knowing the right moves on a video game
is actually key to both movies, though RPO expands that to include memorization
of movies and other pop culture relics. Both heroes are men who devoted themselves
to learning those things, though in the case of Pixels, it’s because he loved
them, whereas it’s more a means to end in RPO (with love following as a
byproduct). And both movies are ridiculous, with RPO perhaps only seeming more valuable
because of its superior execution.
Now that I know I can see bad movies for what they are,
maybe I’ll go on a little binge.
Or, maybe I’ll cleanse my pallet from Pixels with something
good.
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