Oh man – was this thing horrible.
I mean, seriously – how did Adam Sandler basically become the Dane Cook of comedy movie producers where he used to be funny, yet somehow now literally every single thing that the man touches … including apparently my childhood love of video games … just turns to complete and total garbage?!
So where do I start?
“Arcader” – not a term that anyone who’s ever actually cared about video games has ever used. Sounded incrementally more utterly stupid with every utterance … why they didn’t just go with “gamer” makes this a hideous first strike in my book.
The opening plot for this movie with the world championships and the time capsule felt like what the guys who had been tasked to write a movie script about Battleship first came up with before they scrapped it and said, “Come on – we can do better than this…”
The “pixelation” … which apparently became a coined term within hours of the alien invasion that caused it … made about as much sense as Battleship pegs falling out of the sky. It would make sense that the aliens would be all pixelated when they’re destroyed, but why would our stuff do the same???
Kevin James can’t be President … at least not of the United States. Maybe of the PTA or the neighborhood homeowner’s association, but not the whole United States.
The nod to Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani was neat, but it would’ve been cooler if they actually would’ve had him play himself in the movie! Instead he only made a non-speaking cameo while another actor played him during his brief battle with his creation.
Also, the “cheat codes” plot device doesn’t really make sense when not only are the heroes driving cars instead of joysticks, but the cheat codes would’ve been for Pac-Man, not the freaking ghosts!!!
Come to think of it – how do the aliens even know all of the rules of these games??? They were sent a VHS tape of the competition, not the source code to all of the arcade games!
…anyways…
Lady Lisa becomes unpixelated for inexplicable reasons, save for that she’s hot and Gad’s character wants her.
Sandler worked way too hard to kill Donkey Kong because all he had to do was climb the last ladder. You don’t kill Donkey Kong by throwing the hammer at him. That’s not how Donkey Kong works.
In the finale, our pseudo-president talks about “negotiating a truce” with the aliens, which we never saw because Sandler just beat Donkey Kong and disappeared. Nonetheless, everyone else apparently wins, too, as every possible conflict gets nicely tied up into a bow in roughly 30 seconds before the credits roll. Even Toru Iwatani’s stunt double sees his hand grow back – seriously, all that’s missing is the group high-five…
Also, apparently after the movie is over, I guess that Josh Gad fucks Q*bert or something.
Better Video Game Movies From the Last Few Years to Watch Instead of Pixels:
- Wreck-It Ralph
- Tron: Legacy
- Scott Pilgrim vs the World (I didn’t even like this movie, but at least the video game effects were legit)