You’d think a movie about giant retro video game characters destroying the world would be pretty hard to screw up, but Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison gang apparently managed just that with their new film Pixels. It’s currently tracking at 13 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers calling it “a sad experience,” “brainless,” and comparing it to Ebola.
That may be bad, but it’s nowhere near as vitriolic as this review from YouTube critic MovieBob, who spends 10 minutes ripping the film apart from every angle conceivable. An example of what to expect:
“Pixels in an unmitigated piece of godawful dog sh*t. It’s existence feels ultimately like poison or a general infection. It is cinematic strychnine, celluloid chlamidia. Pixels isn’t a movie, it’s a motherf*cking active crime scene, and the crime is cultural vandalism.”
“What we’re faced with here is the worst major Hollywood movie that’s going to come out this goddamn year, and easily the worst Adam Sandler movie where he’s not doing a stupid f*cking voice affectation. The vomit-encrusted nadir of the unholy assembly-line transmutation of Generation X nostalgia into “geek brand marketing” identity. The burning of the Alexandria library by way of a Hot Topic t-shirt printing press.”
“Pixels is bad enough to make you hate the things you love, and watching it made me want to take a blowtorch to every scrap of video game memorabilia in my home.”
That’s just the first minute of the review, and it only gets angrier as it goes on. It’s a classic ass-reaming of epic proportions that brings to mind other timeless reviews like Red Letter Media’s six-hour takedown of the Star Wars prequels or BBC reviewer Mark Kermode’s attack on the Entourage movie and everything it stands for.
It’s unfortunate that we can’t get this angry about stuff that matters, like starving children or climate change or something. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned here: If we want people to care about those things, let Adam Sandler make a movie about them. Then, after we rage and fix all the world’s problems, the only question is whether we give the Nobel Peace Prize to Sandler or me for having such an awesome idea.
