Netflix Is Breathing New Life Into One Of Adam Sandler's Worst Movies

Did you forget about Adam Sandler's 2015 movie "Pixels?" If you did, that makes sense; it was a critical flop that ended up scoring a Razzie nomination (though it at least performed solidly at the box office). Now, according to FlixPatrol, "Pixels" is gaining traction on Netflix, having claimed the number three spot in the streamer's daily top 10 most-streamed movies as of October 14, 2024.

Why "Pixels" is performing well on Netflix's is, frankly, anybody's guess; perhaps affection for the Sandman runs deeper than I realize. In any case, the movie is performing solidly on the streamer, which is also probably news to Sandler's co-stars Kevin James, Josh Gad, Michelle Monaghan, and ... Emmy winners and HBO stalwarts Peter Dinklage and Brian Cox. (How they got involved in a project like this is also anyone's guess, although one can only hope that they got decent paychecks out of the experience.) The movie also has a pretty solid creative team, with Chris Columbus — of "Home Alone" and the first two "Harry Potter" movies — directing and Tim Herlihy (a frequent Sandler collaboration who's worked on "Billy Madison," "Happy Gilmore," and "The Wedding Singer") co-writing with Timothy Dowling. Still, the movie's a stinker, but maybe it's finding a new audience despite its bad reviews and the fact that, compared to Sandler's other films, it's pretty forgettable.

So, what's the deal with "Pixels," an improbable Netflix hit? What's it about, and what did critics say when it came out?

Okay, so what is "Pixels" even about? The movie opens with a short prologue set in the 1980s that sees childhood friends Will "Chewie" Cooper (Jared Riley) and Sam Brenner (Anthony Ippolito) enter a Donkey Kong championship and lose to Eddie "The Fireblaster" Plant (Andrew Bambridge). Fast forward to present day and Will, now played by Kevin James, is the President of the United States and has to assemble a team to protect the world from an alien invasion.

This is harder to explain than it should be, but bear with me: after aliens found a time capsule with a video of the Donkey Kong championship, they watched it and determined that Earth only sent the VHS tape as a declaration of intergalactic war. As a result, President Cooper has to bring together a group known as the Arcaders — Sam (now Adam Sandler), lieutenant colonel Violet van Patten (Michelle Monaghan), gamer Ludlow "The Wonder Kid" (Josh Gad), and even Sam's nemesis Eddie Plant (Peter Dinklage as an adult) team up to take down the alien forces that challenge the Earth to the "best out of five games" and use arcade icons like Pac-Man as weapons.

You can probably figure out how it all ends — Earth triumphs over the aliens and all is well. But how did critics like "Pixels" back in 2015? Well, they didn't.

Over on Rotten Tomatoes, the film earned a stunningly low 18% as well as a critical consensus that reads, "Much like the worst arcade games from the era that inspired it, 'Pixels' has little replay value and is hardly worth a quarter." Individual critics didn't take it easy on Adam Sandler's film either. "When one considers how good this material might have been if placed in the right hands, to see it squandered this way makes it almost more painful to view than the typical Sandler stinker," Peter Sobczynski wrote for RogerEbert.com. For the Los Angeles Times, Mark Olsen was even harsher, writing, "Some movies are so interminable that it seems they might never end, while others are assembled with such indifference that you are essentially left waiting for them to start. 'Pixels' somehow manages both."

Neil Genzlinger at The New York Times critiqued the film for repeating a tired Sandler trope, saying, 'Pixels' is a special-effects eyeful burdened by the fact that it is also yet another film in which Adam Sandler plays a man-child who somehow turns the head of an attractive woman." The final word on the film, though, may well have come from Peter Travers at Rolling Stone, who didn't pull any punches: "I see 'Pixels' as a 3D metaphor for Hollywood's digital assault on our eyes and brains. Not funny. Just relentless and exhausting."

"Pixels" is streaming on Netflix now.