Pixels

There are few occasions when audiences are subjected to such blatant writers’ block on the big screen as Pixels.

There are moments during this vacuum of ingenuity of a movie when it’s so evident, that even for Hollywood, it’s scarcely believable the suits were convinced it was a hit.

Notwithstanding Adam Sandler’s familiar shtick, the script never loses the stench of a cacophony of half-baked ideas. Even the good actors look bored.

It’s the equivalent of a catastrophically-mixed cake, which after 106 minutes in the oven remains an overly sweet sludge of ingredients all collapsing in on themselves, camouflaged with 3D popping candy.

It’s true that manufacturing a coherent story based on the concept of 1980s arcade games such as Space Invaders and Pacman would stretch the most creative minds.

Evidently the writers were cool with never really solving this problem.

At some point (maybe) someone higher up the food chain panicked, thinking “the shareholders are all over my ass on this, plus we need to recognise some god-damn revenue this autumn, so let’s go!”

Whatever happened behind closed doors, the makers pressed ahead with the following concept: In the 1980s aliens picked up broadcast signals of video games such as Space Invaders. They have misinterpreted these signals as Earth’s declaration of war. And here's the sledgehammer to a nut that brings the video games to life – the aliens have responded by sending deadly live action versions of these games to our planet, including Pacman, which humans must complete.

There's some agility in the script that doesn't force the characters to lose their breath while explaining this premise. In fact there are neat one-liners between Sandler, his love interest co-star Michelle Monaghan and her son Matty (Matt Lintz).

The film even starts with a semi-promising ‘80s setting, which it promptly loses. The opening scenes introduce us to teenage buddies Brenner and Cooper who’re competing in an arcade game contest.

Brenner comes up against arch rival Eddie, a character that Peter Dinklage (perhaps because he was already bored before shooting started), burdens with a woefully misguided accent. It’s a strangely depressing misfire that’ll leave Game of Thrones fans weeping into their boxsets.

After the film leaps forward 20 years, we discover that a grown-up Brenner (now played by Sandler) is a software installer, while his friend Cooper (now played by Kevin James) has become president of the United States of America, despite not being able to read. We’re supposed to assume here, I think, that kids are stupid and will let this go.

When the president suddenly faces the aliens’ arcade game-themed attacks, he calls on his old expert-gamer bestie to save the world.

As the story wades on, the plot’s threads are stretched so thinly only the Hadron Collider could find them. It feels that the makers backed themselves into a corner, dug a hole and prayed that 3D effects would be their saving grace.

Coming after Pixar’s Inside Out, itself another example of that studio’s boundless creativity, it's simply disheartening that Pixels’ writers couldn't carve out even a serviceable toy story.

Its release also follows news that the rights to a film based on emojis have been bought. Aside from this obvious sign of a breakdown in civilisation, it’s all evidence of a sickness spreading through Hollywood.

Producers are eschewing risky new ideas and instead, latching onto any popular object in the vein hope that a story can be drawn out if it.

When this strategy fails, as it has so blatantly with Pixels, the results are horrendous.