BIG SCREEN: Pixels Revieux (Rated PG-13)

Hearing that Adam Sandler is in a movie has a similar effect on me these days as hearing that Keanu Reeves was in a movie had on me back in the 90s. Cringe. Pass.

But, that’s mean and sort of unfair. Everyone deserves a millionth chance, right? Besides, my kid really wanted to see Pixels, so off we went. Because that’s what moms do. Sigh.

Pixels opens in 1982 with two kids excitedly rushing to a newly opened arcade. (Behold, the arcade! The only thing my kid has ever found appealing about my childhood. He audibly gasped at the sight of a huge room full of flashing, beeping, blinking video games. As he should. Arcades were, indeed, awesome!) One of the kids finds that he has insane gaming skills and winds up the runner-up in a world championship. These skills come in handy when, 30 years later, aliens misinterpret old video game feeds as declarations of war, and use the games as models for their attacks on Earth. The president (Kevin James) calls on that washed up video gamer, aka his best bud Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler), to lead a team of other former gamers (Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad) in saving the planet.

I was very surprised to see Sandler and James turn in much more understated performances than they usually do, instead letting Gad (you know him as the voice of Olaf from Frozen!) and Dinklage (Game of Thrones/Elf) steal the show. Gad plays an uber-nerdy conspiracy theorist given to hilarious outbursts, while Dinklage is an overconfident, delightfully creepy dude with bad hair and questionable scruples.

I fully expected a giant bucket of stupid from this movie, but it was way more entertaining than I imagined. I love being pleasantly surprised! The soundtrack, video game graphics, and 3-D are cool, and while the story is certainly silly, they kept the pointless gags and really bad dialogue to a minimum, which was a huge relief. Adam Sandler seemed a bit haggard and tired, to be honest -- but I’ll cut my middle-aged brother a break. A little more energy from him would have been nice, but years of silly voices and over-the-top performances are sure to wear a dude out eventually, I suppose.

Overall, Pixels is some no-harm, no-foul fun, but earns its PG-13 rating pretty much solely from some scattered bad language, in case that kind of thing bothers you. It opens on Friday, July 24. Go here for local showtimes and theaters.

BIG SCREEN: Zookeeper Revieux (Rated PG)

Of all the movies coming out this summer, for some odd reason, my 5-year-old has been most excited about Zookeeper. Moreso than Cars or even Kung Fu Panda. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times he’s reenacted a scene from the trailer between Kevin James and a monkey. “How long have you been able to talk?” “Let’s see, today is Tuesday, so… forever!” Cracks him up everytime. I managed to stop myself from warning him about how some movies put all their funny stuff in the commercials. I figure he’s got plenty of time to become as cynical and jaded as dear old mom.

So, the premise. Kevin James plays a dedicated zookeeper named Griffin who lavishes the animals with all kinds of individual attention and works alongside a lovely girl named Kate (Rosario Dawson), in whom he inexplicably shows absolutely no interest. When his beautiful but shallow ex-girlfriend, Stephanie (Leslie Bibb), who brutally declined his elaborate marriage proposal five years earlier, reenters his life, all the zoo animals love Griffin so much that they decide to let him in on their being-able-to-speak secret in order to give him romantic advice. This advice includes peeing on stuff and cutting her off from the herd. When she gives him another chance, he has to decide if it’s worth it to leave the zoo to become the man Stephanie wants him to be, or stay true to himself. (I’m sure you’re just dying to know which one he chooses…)

Okay, may I be blunt? This movie stunk like the stuff the monkey suggested Griffin throw at Stephanie’s other suitor. I hate to say it, because I actually had hopes for this movie. I used to love Kevin James’ standup routines, and it just seemed like a slam-dunk to pair his priceless, subtle expressions and physical comedy with outrageous animal antics. But it wasn’t. What happened? For one thing, even the most basic sight-gags fell flat. How can watching a wolf teach a dude how to mark his territory not elicit a huge guffaw from the audience? Because it was so terribly executed, that's how. Another reason for the overall failure? A bunch of TV writers, Adam Sandler (one of the producers), and the director from The Wedding Singer decided to take the same basic premise from The Wedding Singer and broaden the audience to include middle-schoolers by slapping on a little Dr. Doolittle action, and as you can imagine from that description, it didn't work. My son hardly laughed, I hardly laughed. Who were they aiming for? Were they even trying? Because they managed to miss both demograhics completely.

And the animal antics this movie seemed to promise? Lame and decidedly not hilarious. Even when an animated or talking-animal movie’s not so great, usually I love playing “Guess who’s doing the voice overs?” I got Cher and Sly Stallone as the lions pretty easily (though, they were given no awesome lines nor opportunities to parody themselves. Really?!). Nick Nolte as the gorilla and Jon Favreau as one of the bears weren’t too tough to guess, either. As for the rest of them, well, to tell you the truth – they were so annoying, I just didn’t care. It actually sounded like they grabbed people off the street and told them to simply tighten up their throats and read through the script. I never would have guessed that Adam Sandler was the monkey, as it sounded like a really bad Gilbert Gottfried impression. And Maya Rudolph as the giraffe? A really lethargic Wanda Sykes-ish knockoff.

Wow. Disappointing.

On the bright side, the closing credits and outtakes are sort of funny. So, if you stick it out through the whole movie, at least there’s that.