Pixels

Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage and Michelle Monaghan. Directed by Chris Columbus. 106 minutes. Opens Friday at major theatres. PG

Torontonians have a special reason to be peeved at Pixels, the latest eruption from Adam Sandler’s gas factory.

This sci-fi comedy of invading outer-space arcade gamers was filmed last summer on our major downtown streets, adding to already considerable traffic jams. They closed Adelaide St. for this?

But everybody can get steamed about what a waste of a good idea the movie is, despite the directorial efforts of Chris Columbus, who did the first two Harry Potter movies.

Pixels writers Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling adapt their screenplay from a brilliant French short film of the same title and theme, which exhibits more creativity in two brisk minutes than Sandler and his team do in nearly two droning hours.

The feature-length Pixels also steals mightily from Ghostbusters. Sandler teams with a hyperactive Josh Gad and a pixel-chewing Peter Dinklage as middle-aged versions of geeks who, in the early 1980s, excelled at playing video games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. None of these guys have done much with their lives since then.

But when an alien race misinterprets their old-school amusements as a real-time intergalactic threat, and starts attacking Earth with monstrous versions of these pixellated pals, then who you gonna call?

Kevin James plays the U.S. president doing the calling. He just so happens to be the childhood buddy of Sandler’s Sam Brenner. He’s also illiterate, for no particular reason other than a lame attempt at political humour.

Such dull contrivances pile up like Tetris tiles in Pixels, which also adds Michelle Monaghan as the token female invader battler and obligatory Sandler love interest. The film really bogs down midway when the action abruptly stops so Sandler and Monaghan can get their own game going.

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The special effects are good — a car chase with a giant-sized Pac-Man is well done — and Torontonians will have fun playing Spot the Landmark, even though our city is once again subbing for New York.

You can see Queens Park at the end of a barely disguised University Ave., during a scene where digital beasties run amok.

But while the concept is a cut above the usual Sandler swill, the comedy isn’t. The script might as well have been penned by the same clueless aliens doing the invading.

Sandler seems so listless and disconnected, he’s like E.T., another 1980s character. You know, the stranded and lonely extraterrestrial who just wanted to phone home.