Adam Sandler's 'Pixels' Is Receiving the Worst Reviews Possible From Critics

Did you know Adam Sandler had a film out in theaters Friday? Pixels, starring Sandler, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage and Michelle Monaghan, is a sci-fi comedy about fight extraterrestrial aliens who mistake '80s arcade video games for a declaration of war. 

If you haven't heard about the film yet, it may be due to its commercially unsuccessful box office opening, drawing in a weak $25 million on its first day. The film is also being ripped apart by critics and audiences, receiving a mere 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Joe Neumaier from the New York Daily News says the film is not funny, and Sandler plays a typically typecasted role for his career:

"Look, I spent every weekend in 1982 (and all of my paper route money) in arcades, but that didn't fry my brain enough to make "Pixels" fun. Every few summers something like this appears — The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Evolution, R.I.P.D., The Watch. They want to be Ghostbusters but are just lousy ... Every joke is lame, every special effect unspecial. When the aliens use various Reagan-era pop-cultural artifacts, such as Max Headroom and Madonna, to deliver messages, it's not even worth a smirk. Just as bad are the Sandler specialties the movie is shoehorned around." 

The New York Post's Kyle Smith similarly shreds apart the movie, calling it "lazy" and almost unfathomable: 

"Pixels started off lazily enough, with nothing more on its mind than ripping off Ghostbusters with video game characters. But it stumbled onto an accomplishment truly awe-inspiring: It makes Battleship and The Watch look good. Hiding Adam Sandler's participation on the poster of the film is understandable, but the studio should have taken the logical next step and made the entire film disappear, or at least have shot it off into space like the clips of 1982 pop-culture highlights which, in Pixels, are seen by aliens." 

At least Sandy Cohen from the Associated Press admits the concept for the film is smart, until she too, declares it a total bore:

"The core concept is clever — space aliens misunderstand a recording of old video-games as a declaration of war, and send digital monsters based on those games to Earth as their army. But its execution in the hands of director-producer Chris Columbus and star-producer Adam Sandler is a mess. This disappointing comedy falls apart before it begins because no one would behave the way its characters do, and their ridiculous choices drive the action."

And Rolling Stones' Peter Travers doubts millennials will care to watch anything based on video games from the 1980s, especially when it's a "relentless and exhausting" as Pixels:

"Director Chris Columbus surely hopes that today's teen gamers, hooked on Halo and Call of Duty, will care about what happened 30 years ago. That's iffy, unless 13-year-olds think it's a scream when Dinklage asks to be part of a sex sandwich with Serena Williams and Martha Stewart, who both do cameos. Yikes! I saw Pixels as a 3D metaphor for Hollywood's digital assault on our eyes and brains. Not funny. Just relentless and exhausting."

This isn't the first Sandler film to recently flop in a major way: Critics have been debating which Sandler flop really is his worst since Grown Ups.

You can check out the trailer for the animation film below (if you wish):