Adam Sandler is starring in a movie that I actually want to see, and I haven’t said that since … um, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. Don’t judge me, I was a fan since his stand up days and still feel Happy Gilmore and The Waterboy are works of genius. So, what made me want to see an Adam Sandler movie? The film is Pixels and it has done what Wreck it Ralph couldn’t even do – it lured Donkey Kong and Pac-Man to the dark side.
The movie is based on the amazing short film made by Patrick Jean about a city attacked by video game characters. The movie stars Adam Sandler, Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Josh Gad (The Book of Mormon) and Michelle Monaghan (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) as humans combating the invaders.
So, what makes this cool (outside of Peter Dinklage’s mullet)? Check out who all Sony Pictures got for the movie from the video game world: Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Missile Command, Frogger, Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Q*Bert, Space Invaders, Joust, Defender, Robotron and Wizard of Wor.
Now, I don’t know how old all of you are, but I played most of those games either on my old Atari 2600 or in video game arcades (for some of you kids, those were places we went to play games when people still left their homes for entertainment). Anyway, here is the synopsis for the joint awesomeness of these classic video games:
In Pixels, when intergalactic aliens misinterpret video-feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war against them, they attack the Earth, using the games as models for their various assaults. President Will Cooper (James) has to call on his childhood best friend, ’80s video game champion Sam Brenner (Sandler), now a home theater installer, to lead a team of old-school arcaders (Dinklage and Gad) to defeat the aliens and save the planet. Monaghan plays the team’s unique weapons specialist. The action-comedy is directed by Chris Columbus from a story by Tim Herlihy and a screenplay by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, based on the original short film of the same name by Patrick Jean.
Pixels will hit theaters on May 15, 2015.