For the record, there is a good chance I will hate this film. I am not an Adam Sandler fan, give-or-take my inexplicable admiration for You Don't Mess With the Zohan as well as his lower-key work, and the jokes just aren't clicking with me. But my daughter wants to see this. My wife wants to see this. Heck, I'm sure my (soon-to-be-four year old) son will want to see this, but whether or not he gets in a theater to will depend on if his behavior improves between now and July. Point being, even though there is a good chance I won't care for the nostalgia-bait sci-fi spectacle, it is indeed a corker of a premise (based on Patrick Jean's 2010 short film and arguably awfully similar to an old Futurama episode, but I digress) and the last time the entire family wanted to see the same movie was The LEGO Movie and we all know how well that did. To be honest, I wrote that whole "Sleeper Hits of Summer" article last month mostly to atone for leaving Pixels off of the "big hits of summer" portion of said multi-part summer movie preview. I may have underestimated this one. Or perhaps I'm overestimating it now. But I digress...
So yeah, the month of July, with Minions, Marvel's Ant-Man, Pixels, and Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, could be pretty massive after all. As I'm sure you know, Pixels stars Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Monaghan, Josh Gad, Ashley Benson, and Sean Bean (?!) in a story of aliens who mistakenly read our video feeds of classic video games as hostile and use said imagery as weapons of war. So it's Adam Sandler and friends against Pac Man and Donkey Kong. Obviously this is the classic male overgrown child fantasy, with would-be underachievers being tasked to save the world thanks to their skills in old-school 80's video games. And it perfectly appeals to (mostly male) adults who thrive on generational nostalgia as well as (mostly male) children who will thrill to the big-budget video-gamey spectacle on display.
It's a pretty canny premise in terms of getting parents and their kids into the theater for the kind of film that doesn't require a babysitter. I've discussed this in passing before, but Adam Sandler may be at a point where the audience that grew up with his comedic antics are now old enough to have kids and thus might not necessarily want to get a babysitter to see something like Blended or Jack and Jill. But something like this, or Hotel Transylvania (which to be fair was better than I expected), gets the best of both worlds, as you get the older Adam Sandler fans as well as the kids who don't necessarily know every line of Happy Gilmore by heart. As for still serving the adult audience (and Sandler's own adult interests), that's where the
Obviously this is speculation, but don't be surprised to see "adult" Adam Sandler movies on Netflix while the "kid" Adam Sandler movies end up being the multiplex options, along with periodic diversions like Men, Women, & Children, and The Cobbler. But speaking specifically of Pixels, it absolutely scared Pan all the way to October, and it theoretically offers big-scale sci-fi thrills in a kid-sized package, all for "only" $110 million. And yes, I am intrigued by the fact that the trailer makes no mention of its director, specifically Chris Columbus who helmed the first two Harry Potter films and old-school favorites like Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire. One of these days Columbus will get the credit he deserves for the first two Harry Potter films, but it is sadly not this day. Anyway, Pixels opens July 24th from
