The Worst Idea Of All Time - Pixels: The Worst 28 Plays Later of All Time

Episode Date: April 12, 2016

SPONSORED BY BIGPIPE.CO.NZThe lads are back in the saddle. But a different saddle. A Pixels saddle. They're joined by Paul Verhoeven of the 28 Plays Later podcast in a very strange hotel room in central Melbourne to watch the 2015, 17% Rotten Tomatoes-awarded film PIXELS. In this podcast mash up (ft a very disturbing mash up intro) Guy, Tim and Paul delve back into the Sandlerverse replete with a Lamensoff, the usual sexism we've come to except AND a beautiful shitworld built on top of beloved franchises. Enjoy the terrible audio quality, a burned out Montgomery and three men united by hate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

🎵 🎵 It's the worst idea of all time to be back in the saddle in some ways. It's been a while since we've watched a terrible film. Paul, thank you so much for putting this together. Yeah, it's kind of a centaur of podcasts. I don't know which half is the horse half and which is the human half,

but I know at this point none of us are feeling particularly well. You guys obviously host The Worst Idea of All Time, and I am one half of 28 Plays Later, and seeing as how we're a video game podcast

And you're a bad movie podcast It seemed logical For us to get this shit out of the way I mean Like it was inevitable Oh yeah Let's start right at the beginning gents A little context

We're here in beautiful Melbourne, Australia At the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Right in the thick of itents. A little context. We're here in beautiful Melbourne, Australia at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Right in the thick of it. We're in a quest apartment on the corner of Burke and Russell Street, room 106. I need help. Don't give them the address.

It's not too late. No, look, they can't travel back through time and save us from this audio-visual holocaust. They'll turn this room into a museum after the people hear this. Right, right, they can't travel back through time and save us from this audio-visual holocaust. They'll turn this room into a museum after the people hear this. Right, right, right. Well, yeah. We, specifically the three of us, have booked and paid for a hotel room so we could all get together and watch Pixels.

I made it through the movie, but it was a fucking fever dream. My eye, this is the heaviest my eyelids have ever felt. Guy has done back to, like, performed in back to back comedy shows this evening and then had to hightail it over to this hotel room. Look, we're not criticising you, but there was a point where you were curled up on yourself and it was fucking horrifying. Honestly, because, okay, so first of all, the volume on this,

we rented a hotel room to watch an Adam Sandler film, and my girlfriend was legitimately convinced that we were going to fuck. Like, she thought that was the end game of the year, was for us to get a hotel room. Hey, the night is young, Paul. Look, anything could happen. But, I mean, at this point, the volume on the TV was very bad. So two hours into this, wait, how long was the film?

An hour and 41. 35 minutes. Okay, well, it felt longer. The volume wasn't great. So I ran around and I wedged two salad bowls under the television to try and increase the acoustics. We should get a photo of that, actually. It's pretty bad.

Artful. Yeah, it's MacGyver grade. Nothing I could do took the venom out of this garbage scowl of a movie. Yeah, it's hard to know where to enter with this, but let me enter here. I think this movie is worse than Grown Ups 2, and I'm a pretty qualified person to be able to make that judgment call. This is truly, you said the word dumpster fire. I can't think of a better term to phrase.

It's just a fucking absolute train wreck from what... Kevin James is the fucking president of the United States this movie for no reason in particular. Yeah, let's walk on that. We could talk about this for like an hour. So, presumably, in this reality, he is... We had this discussion. Do you think he's first term or second term president? First term, I feel. Right. I don't know what that's based on, but I get the sense he is, we had this discussion, do you think he's first term or second term president? First term, I feel.

Right. I don't know what that's based on, but I get the sense he is. You reckon trailing towards the end? Because his approval ratings aren't good. He's, you know, people are making fun of him. He can't. There was that scene at the start, which you pointed out, was basically a parody of George Bush having trouble reading

during the 9-11 bit. It was a weird, so they were obviously, like, trouble reading during the 9-11 bit it was a weird so they were obviously like um uh referencing that scene when george w bush is reading my pet goat in front of a bunch of um like kindergartners i think it is yeah when he gets told that the first oh the second plane has hit the the south tower i think yes and so they kind of play out the scene that's like that where he's reading to these girl scouts which is weird that and they're all in a classroom yeah and uh and they're like riffing on that and i'm like oh it's a pretty bold way to open the movie making like sort of a reference to 9-11 and a family orientated adam sandler comedy yeah and the movie makes less sense as it goes on yeah like that's a

pretty high nonsensical bar. And you can tell that everyone involved in making it was aware that it didn't make any sense because they kept trying to explain it, but it's like, when they're trying to explain through something and they're just muddying the waters further and they're like,

okay, but we just need to get to the next page of script. So they just keep going. Like, everything's going fine, but it's not going fine there's some weird scenes of exposition

that last so long of everyone just explaining why we are where we are right now why the fuck were they in Britain for a bit

oh right okay so Sean Bean is running this kind of boot camp and he tells the basically football hooligans that they're shooting a beer commercial

and then at one point he and Brian Cox are hugging who was Brian Cox Brian Cox is a physicist

yeah but it was it was implied at one point that he was like but there wasn't Brian Cox like I maybe I'm thinking

of a different dude there's a I'm pretty sure there's a physicist called Brian Cox that's not him no but there is a there that is a

Brian that is a Brian Cox right but he's an actor the one who's in this yeah but it's Brian Cox there are two models a Brian Cox. Right, but he's an actor, the one who's in this. No, it's Brian Cox A. There are two models of Brian Cox. Oh, I see.

It was Brian Cox A. Brian Cox B wasn't on camera. No, Brian Cox A spearheaded the Treadstone Initiative that created Jason Bourne, whereas Brian Cox B is, of course, the science celebrity. This Brian Cox was... Fuck, this movie was a train wreck. There were, like, so many bizarre conceits in it.

And I think the one thing we agreed on was that Josh Gad was pretty on the money. Yeah, which I did not expect. No. He delivered comedically. He had, like, probably four bits where I genuinely laughed at him doing... You looked sceptical as fuck look he was fine

it's just I don't know at some point you've got to ask why they're making them but you've also got to ask why are we watching them especially in our particular circumstance this is a real weird way to engage with a movie that you definitely were supposed to see at the cinema this is the opposite of the cinema i'd like you to be knowing that we uh

bought we you bought this on dvd yeah so i went to jb hi-fi and i bought a copy of how much was it pixels for 20 bucks and we'll look we'll pay you back well all the expenses will be split let me tell you that right now that's okay but i say this much. I had to apologize to the teller because he gave me a look as if I'd just been sick in his mouth. We should sign this and sell it and try and recoup all the hotel costs. Look, if people are willing to absorb some of the damage we took for this, are you reading the blurb?

Can you read the blurb for us, please? Yeah, and point your mouth into there. I'm actually reading the special features. Oh, we haven't watched them Qbert Dojo Quest Game on music video by Waka Flocka Flame featuring Good Charlotte

you know that Waka Flocka Flame Good Charlotte mashup you've been busting for so as described by whoever writes this garbage when aliens misinterpret video

feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war against them they attack the earth using games like Pac-Man Donkey Kong

Galaga Centipede and Space Invaders as models for their various assaults President Will Cooper Kevin

James has to call on his childhood best friend, 80s video game champion Sam Brenner, Adam Sandler, to lead a team of old school arcaders, Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad, to defeat the aliens and save the planet. That is not a feature film. That is a short story by a fucking nine-year-old with learning disabilities. That's a pitch for a movie that gets summarily rejected, not put into production. Can we just quickly... Something just occurred to me. Yeah.

Fucking Dan Aykroyd's vodka. Oh. Can we please talk about this? Okay, so Dan Aykroyd appears in the movie ever so briefly. And Paul actually... I said, man man I miss old clearly Ghostbusters era Dan Aykroyd and you know even like Coneheads

that are stretching and stuff like that I mean Saturday Night Live, he was legendary The Blues Brothers Yeah there we go, that's what I'm talking about He had some good late shit He pops up in this movie and I'm like oh man I miss old Dan Aykroyd and then paul

you made a reference to the vote you were like yeah he's trying to hawk that skull vodka and we both got caught up because both kind of had jobs in the media peripherally and that junket he did a couple years ago it's really aggressive he would like talk to people and then five minutes and go all right let's talk about the vodka yeah very aggressive and assertive and then and then like 20 minutes after he first pops up, apropos of fucking nothing, except for a contractual obligation. Yeah, so they've just downed the aliens for the first time,

and they suddenly cut to a pub. And what are they drinking? They're drinking a beer initially, and then Adam Sandler thinks there's, you know, we need something a little harder than beer, and they bust out one of the Dan Aykroyd vodka skulls. It's sickening. It's fucked. It's's fun it's fucking it's mental so much sense like sandler and fucking all-power to dan akroyd for standing up adam sandler sandler was like hey dan i'm doing a movie do you want to be in it and he's just so used to people saying yes because people hate themselves and dan akroyd

was like yeah i'll do it and sandler was like great but before he could hang And Dan Aykroyd was like, yeah, I'll do it. And Sandler was like, great. But before he could hang up the phone, Aykroyd said, yeah, I'll do it. As long as you put my fucking skull block here. Your garbage power movie. And Sandler said, what difference does it make? I feel like, oh God,

every Adam Sandler movie feels like a timeshare. It's like a garbage timeshare of some sort of horrible, horrible... Everyone's throwing their keys in the bowl. No one gives a shit. This is different. Pixels is different. How? No, it's uniquely troubling because what they've done is they haven't just created a universe themselves

and shown you great disrespect by existing in it for two hours because it's a horrible sand laverse. Sure. This one takes all these existing franchises and cultural touchstones from your childhood that, you know, are fond memories for a lot of people, myself included. Banking on the nostalgia. And then just diarrhea shits all over your childhood. It's like really fucked up how many franchises they dragged through the mud to make this thing happen. Look, I honestly just can't get out of my head

the implied sex between Josh Gad and Q-Bit. Because let's talk about the fact that at the end of every battle in this movie, humans, I don't give a shit, but they win a trophy. And the trophy, what was the first trophy? It was the duck hunt dog which was never really addressed again.

Ah. It rocked up in an old lady's flat. I mean we know they fucked. And then in the second instance it was Q-Bit. And then eventually Q-Bit metamorphosized into this blonde woman

that Josh Gad was heartbroken about. Because women are objects. Yeah. And you can and through hard work and persistence you can wear them down it's the erosion

technique of flirting which many people default to and then at the end sorry I don't want to spoil this bag of shit movie at the end the epilogue

cuts to Josh Gad and Qubit's children yeah it's weird because so so Qubit so Josh Gad for his entire life has been obsessed

with this video game character which paul and i can't figure out if it's an existing franchise or not yeah but either way she's um this uh double blade wielding uh sort of amazonian statuesque blonde woman in a red dress and she appears on the scene in josh gad instead of destroying this one because she's not a villain he's in love with this game character so he um offers himself to her and she puts down her swords and they get together and then when they defeat the aliens all of the sprites explode simultaneously so she she like um atomizes and fucks off but then for some reason yeah cubit still exists because he's a trophy. Yeah. And then he turns into the blonde sword wielding lady.

And then Josh Gad pashes her. Yeah. And even Sam like at the time is like, is anyone else weirded out by the fact that Josh Gad's making out with Cupid? That's true. But there was a point where, um, Dinklage,

who is a whole other kettle of bad acting, turns to Josh Gad and says, are you going to introduce me to your girlfriend? And he says fiance and then he leers at the girl and what does she say

nothing because she's fucking mute in fact yeah she doesn't have a line yeah that's troubling she has no lines

she can't say I don't think she can make noise so she's literally a trophy yeah she has not a single line

in the film it's really a lot of troubling things going on in this film yeah a lot of things a lot of troubling things going on in this film. Yeah. A lot of things. A lot of things to unpack.

I, look, I just want to say I liked it just to fucking agitate both of you. I don't know. What do you expect? I don't think people liked it when it came out, did they? Okay, so I just saw Batman versus Superman. And everyone was, you know, this is the worst movie ever made, this has destroyed the comics, da-da-da. It's fine.

Like, it's not the greatest movie ever made. Definitely, I will give you that for sure. And, you know, a lot that you can pick apart. But it's an enjoyable film. I enjoyed watching it. I enjoyed the experience of watching the film in that it gave me a lot to talk about, and there were some really cool scenes in it.

Like, I kind of came away going, that whole experience was roughly approximate to a movie, whereas this was not. The leads were good and stuff. Pexels is fucking weirdly bad. Like, strangely bad. It's worse than Grown Ups 2. It's a high watermark.

Genuinely, it is like the most cynical of movie making sort of procedures it's just Adam Sandler in a room at Happy Madison probably up to his eyeballs in weed and attention and financial

backing and he's like hey look we need an idea for a movie and we I don't like i don't know they just pretty much they would just be like let's buy up the rights to all of these video games yeah there we go we made a movie i can go home now it's 9 30 finally i can see my wife and kids and he walks out of the office and leaves the script writing process to two poor fucking bastards or like he wants us to do what? And they did it, and they just did it once,

and no one double-checked it, and they submitted the script, and it got greenlit. And then they're on set, and they're all just like, well, look, we could improvise better versions of these scenes, but we just don't have the time. You know, my dad was a cop for many years, and he spent a lot of time... We all know that. Look, he...

We all know this about Paul. We're familiar. It's in the origin story, in Paul Verhoeven Origins. And there's this point... Lieutenant Verhoeven. My dad talks to me often about how easy it is to get into high-security places. The trick is to act like you belong there.

Yeah. Adam Sandler's movies are like just... Imagine Kevin James holding a box of pizzas, going, pizzas, I got pizzas, and then he just kind of somehow fucking fumbles his way into the epicentre of the Pentagon, right? Yeah. But that's, Adam Sandler movies,

they deftly sidestep every obstacle and they become these frictionless turds that just sort of sluice through. You want to know... A frictionless turd actually sounds like a pretty sound bell movement. What are they? We all hear long for frictionless turds. sounds like a pretty sound bowel movement. What it is? We all wear long frictionless turds. What it is?

Yeah. Is Adam Sandler's made a wooden horse. He's hidden himself and his mates inside this horse. It's a wooden Mini Cooper and there's four of them. Fuck, it is a Trojan, isn't it? So look, what I'd like to do is, we've sort of already done this in bits and pieces, but ever so briefly try and explain... The plot.

The rough beats and the plot, so... Well, sure, I mean, it's hard to overlook the fact that the film starts with Dan Aykroyd announcing a video game contest and then Kevin James is president, which is sort of the exhilarating gear change that Tim and Guy really struggled with because you know I feel like you guys were a bit more tired than I was very jerky like there was no

the film starts with the trailer for Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 and it's soon followed by the trailer for Grown Ups 2 and I with my eyeballs half open was like what fucking torture chamber have I literally just walked across town to come into?

What fuckery is this? You guys ever seen Hellraiser? You know that box? There's this fucking puzzle box that if you open up, hell spews out. I just feel like that's Happy Madison in movie form. And I feel like at the end, there was an... Okay, so you get to the end and it says Game Over. I was waiting for a question mark.

Yeah, same. Game Over? I was waiting for it to say, when it says pixels, I was waiting for it to say one. Just to fuck with it. Anyway, so look. The movie opens and... That's how all Adam Sandler movies should finish.

With the movie title and the number one next to it. Even Grown Ups 2? Grown Ups 2 and 1. So good. movie title and they're number one next to it even grown ups two grown ups two one so good so it opens up with this scene of them all as

kids which is exactly what they did with grown ups I think in the first movie as well and it's like it's a cute

little bit and you know it's fine and the child actors they've got not good but they're doing a fine job of

saying the lines into a camera yeah it's unsubtle though there was one point where Adam Sandler discovers in one day that he's really good at video games

and I'm pretty sure the young Kevin James says boy one day this is really going to come in handy yeah it's very you know but that's

that is what it is it's efficient storytelling that's fine again frictionless and so you have that for a say five or six minutes and they go to

a world tournament where Adam Sandler as a kid loses where Adam Sandler, as a kid, loses to Peter Dinklage, as a kid, in the showdown, which is Donkey Kong. And then we very jarringly flash forward to a dystopian future where Kevin James has been installed leader of the free world. Yeah, but you don't find that out straight away. First you cut to a bar with Kevin James and Adam Sandler talking about women they want to fuck yeah and then they walk outside and

suddenly the press is there right yeah no it cuts to kevin james and adam sandler talking about kevin james's wife and how it's like she just doesn't understand i don't want to hang out with her i'm a dude i just want to drink beer with the boys. With the boys. Woman or objects. We need to make this super explicit throughout the entire movie. They said that. It's a quote.

I know. We go to that and then we go to, Adam Sandler is effectively a cable guy. He's installing flat screen TVs and consoles and stuff in people's houses. So he meets this woman who's recently separated from her husband. There's a kid there. She is an alcoholic and there's no glossing past that.

Yeah, she's locked in the closet coping with her marital grief. I think she's three sheets to the wind at this point and her child, her child is in the adjacent room with a stranger. That's sort of where we're at that's true a stranger clad in orange who then wanders into the closet and proceeds to start drinking with her yeah and he's not wouldn't and is that is that floating does he float yeah yeah

it is it's totally unprofessional there's a lot of fat and he goes in for a cheeky pash and is denied. Yeah, he's comforting Michelle Monaghan as she cries about her husband leaving her for a 19-year-old. So many problems across the board. And then Adam Sandler's like, okay, well now that you feel slightly better about your husband leaving you for a 19-year-old, it's time for you to pash the guy who came over to install a video game console

on the back of your TV and she is like no absolutely not but then they just make sure they throw on one shot of her being partially charmed so that you know eventually they'll make out they telegraph it I don't want to judge people have charms

beyond the physical but when a man with a face like a leathery orb approaches your face leathery orb at a 90 degree angle minutes after you've told him that you're emotionally bereft you're not gonna

you're not gonna go for it you're not gonna give it up for him no speak for yourself Paul look we all have preferences that's fine anyway a few phone calls come through. Adam Cena leaves to go to the White House. And what do you know?

The woman has to leave to go to the White House too. But not before displaying a proficient lack of ability to know where to put his fucking hand. There's a point where he's sitting like a... You know in the old days where a woman wouldn't want to be indelicate so she'd sit herself side saddle on the sweetest mare? He's sitting there with his legs splayed off to the side like a sweet little girl.

We're in the closet, by the way, at the moment, folks. We're back in the closet, yeah. And he's got his hand on his knee with such a lack of self-awareness. Now, I can't tell if he's being... Because at that point, he didn't know what to do with his hands. Maybe that was part of the performance. Or maybe Adam Sandler is just incredibly physically awkward.

What do you think it is? I think it's the latter. I think it was just like... It's the latter combined with a one-take mentality. Yeah, it was definitely the one-take. Adam Sandler would have done a take and his hand would have been sitting on his leg and whoever directed it, Chris Columbus, by the way,

would have been like, hey, Adam, that was a good take, but your hand was kind of awkwardly resting on your leg. Do you want to do it again? And he said, no. And then Chris Columbus said, okay, we're all getting paid millions of dollars anyway. And then the entire cast and crew would break it in hysterics and pull the fingers down the back of the camera and upload it as bonus footage on YouTube.

So then we're at the White House. The lady turns out to work for DARPA, the Department of Advanced... Pragmatism? Problematic. Official movies. But they dress her up like a sailor for the entire film. Right. Which is not right.

No, because... She's a scientist. If you work at DARPA, you're a scientist. Are you talking about Michelle yeah and then the aliens just start attacking shit yeah but not before

we find out that Michelle has a fucking robot co-worker that was terrifying that was like the level of

um what I would describe as techno gore which is is kind of like um you know in Robocop yeah

uh especially the reboot the recent one where they're like strapped to gurneys humans in a state techno gore, which is kind of like, you know, in Robocop. Yeah. Especially the reboot. Oh, where they're like strapped to gurneys, humans in a state of distress with machinery being fused to them and shit? Well, more,

there's a specific scene. I know not a lot of people saw this movie, but I actually kind of like the Robocop reboot because apparently I don't have great taste in movies.

Right. Edit, whatever. But there's a scene where Murphy is like just a head and he doesn't realise because it's an ECU. It's an extreme close-up just on his facial features and it zooms out and he's just this head being kept alive and he starts screaming.

And it's like a great horrifying moment. And yeah, it was like on par with that. There's a guy who walks through the DARPA office whose back of his skull is this elongated it looks like those aerodynamic helmets that you give cyclists when they're at the like world champs but it's perspex see-through and it's all microchips and shit but that's his brain yeah it's fucking so creepy yeah the back of your head shouldn't look like a tear your skull has whipped yeah. You know? Yeah. And it's...

Was that referenced again or was that just like... He comes back for no reason. But it's just like, they just float that out. They're like, this is what happens in the universe of the movie. Yeah. And he's the only cyborg too. Yeah, but having said that, Josh Gad, who is depicted as some sort of Asperger's ridden sexual omnivore,

flirts with everyone in the fucking film. And at one point is seen just touching the man's head and walking behind him saying something about how beautiful he is. He refers to a tall African-American soldier as a perfect Nubian boy and then keeps repeating it. And again, this is part of the reason why Josh Gad was fucking super liable in this film because he flirts aggressively with every soldier and then cries a bit and then has to get

escorted off he was playing the role of Nick Swanson yeah he was presumably unavailable because he was in it as a cameo yeah but not was he in the back of the ambulance no Nick Swanson was um which one was it he was the yeah yeah sorry he was he was the one in the back of the everyone's

in the wrong fucking role in this movie like just in addition to all the problems because who did we go through before that like

the chess game of where everyone should be sitting right I personally think that if we assume that Adam Sandler

is the centre of this universe so his character and casting doesn't change Alec Baldwin is the natural choice for the president which Kevin James is in well because jenna is kevin james's wife and she has

about six lines that's what it was for me that did that that's a perfectly reasonable assumption because you know kevin james looks like a muscular thumb with a face drawn on him at the best of times yeah and i kept wanting to see his dingus like yeah you were baying for dick blood in this movie you were like you said a couple times out loud i just want to see kevin james's dick well it's not until now that i realize how much kevin james looks like stretch armstrong you know stretch armstrong as a kid yeah it's like a rubbery muscle man with a wire frame and you cannot break him and he's stocky and look reliable staunch sturdy peasant calves just rock solid rubber boy and kevin james looks like every suit is like sewed around him you know there's like metal bands up around trees

to stop possums from climbing up them yeah i've i follow the analogy you've done a grand job of painting a visual picture thank you what about any of this me makes you be like well you know what i want to i want to take that soda on straight the fuck off and check out his ding dong. Well, the thing is, look, he doesn't look fat. He looks chunky. He looks like a can of soup with a head on it, right? So I want to know if his dick is the same proportions. I want to know if his dick is just like this perfect, smooth, just rubbery.

I reckon it's big and it's messy really? yeah I reckon he's got a big messy dick down there I don't think there's anything perfect about it it's got a rugged handsomeness to it look I don't want it to it doesn't have to have a 5 o'clock shadow and be looking leftwards so it looks like it's on the side of a coin

I just need it to have a fucking masculine fucking I definitely think it's on the side of a coin. I just need it to have a fucking masculine fucking. I just need. I definitely think it's a manly dick. Look, it's definitely got, it's got angles, right? You're using the word need. I need.

I don't need to have it in on or near me. I need to know what it looks like so I can go, you know, when you have a song stuck in your head and you can't fucking remember how it ends. So it's stuck in your head for days. You got a dick worm for Kevin James that's what you got Paul serious case of the dick worm the problem is when we're talking about Kevin James' dick so much we haven't progressed past like the first

80th of the film so where were we up to no I feel like I described all of it the aliens come and then they attack him and fucking nothing else really goes down that's it that is genuinely it there's a false ending that comes at about an hour into the movie and we're all looking around going,

please. What the fuck? Like, is it a really long credit sequence? And then the aliens just attack again and they do the same thing they did before pretty much. Right. A different set of sprites.

But there's never, like the motivation for anything is never, nothing makes sense. And that can be fun and fine in a movie but they play it like it's all kind of adding up and that's a big part of the problem is it's like you haven't earned the right to do any of this you just want wow they do they use all the film work techniques that are associated with the raising of the stakes but they haven't you just don't give

it you can't care you try to care i tried to care i think we all came into this like reasonably fair-minded this is a film i wanted to see in the movies because i saw the trailer and the visual effects are actually fucking dope like there's a lot of visual stuff in it that i think looks cool yeah and in the trailer you saw the creator of Pac-Man have this beautiful dumb speech talking to Pac-Man calling the beautiful boy and getting his hand bit off. That was great. This scene worked. It was really good, but the problem is, like you

said, it's all conclusions. This is all cum shots. It's just cum shot after cum shot with zero build up. It's like someone running up to you and just jacking it in your face and running away giggling gleefully, which seems to so much like Adam Sandler's later career. Whereas what you need is you need to, like, you need to fucking have a drink and play some music

and work your way up to it and earn that moment, as opposed to just having, like, the climax of... It's just climax after climax. And because it's so hollow, and because it's Adam Sandler and Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage in a wig that made me want to vomit, I just felt angry half the time. You don't always got to fuck your heart. In fact, sometimes that's not right to do.

Speaking of... Sometimes you got to make some love and fucking give us some smooth cheese. Problem is, there was a bit where Jack Black, sorry, Josh Gad, was trying to evoke Jack Black and he was singing a Tears for Fears song while the president watched. The president, Kevin James, watched this happen. You can't take issue with that. I can't take issue with Kevin James being the president? Okay, so there's kind of like... Who uses his power to help Dinklage

potentially fuck Serena Williams? Dude, all movies have a bell curve. You can't be outraged at the whole thing. You've got to... You've got to like... You mean I can't be outraged at the whole thing you've gotta you've gotta like you can't just be constantly

outraged at the film there's some stuff you just gotta be like okay this is where we are this is what

we're doing this is the universe we're in resignation is what that's called yeah

it's kinda just acknowledging where was your resignation look man I had plenty of resignation

there were so many down points there were points where I was like of resignation. There were so many down points. There were points where I was like, I feel like we were just lobbing friendly heckles in. We weren't shitting on the film the whole time, but every once in a while, we just became exasperated with...

I'm charmed by the way Adam Sandler goes, I wish the world was so... He just wants a world where he's a hero, right? Yeah. Like in every movie. Because in this whole universe, he is a savant. He doesn't work hard or practice to get good at this stuff. He's not a Hermione Granger.

He's a Harry Potter. He's naturally talented. He just wanders in. He's the fucking chosen one. He's an effortless, you know, Rube. But that's an admirable, commendable, or at least understandable way of wanting to see the world. I just want a world in which I am naturally talented and people appreciate me for my fucking efforts. And if they don't do it back when I initially get those efforts, they appreciate it later on in life.

And they throw me a fucking party and I get a cool motocross style pantsuit. Well, it's, yeah. Okay. I'm just saying. Okay. I'm just saying... I was coming at it from a, like, Revenge of the Nerds angle, but you were saying this is, like, someone's God-given talent should be appreciated.

I honestly think maybe Adam Sandler enjoyed playing video games as a kid. Yeah. And then someone went, we've got this idea for a film about video games, and he's like, I enjoyed those as a kid. Can I wear basketball shorts on set? But he's obviously a filthy casual as well. Like don't even you know everything's so broad and yeah there is a point where the kid who i don't think is ever named i could be wrong clearly he is we weren't

paying attention the kid who is just like begging adam sandler to be his new dad mighty ducks style yeah it's very mightyucks in many ways. They even do a flying V up the street after Pac-Man. So I think there was one point where they're watching footage of The Last of Us, which is a really great survival horror game. And Adam Sandler is just hanging shit on this kid for liking a game, which has that whole thing about Adam Sandler being able to see patterns and not being able to understand like the chaos of the game.

And then finally- Rain Man style. Embracing it at the end was just... Which they just kind of keep throwing in the odd line to restoke that increasingly dying fire of like, oh yeah, that's right, there's some reason why he can play video games real good. Oh yeah, fuck, that's right, they mention that. How is a college dropout who wears orange shorts for a living

the product of an ordered mind? Not necessarily ordered. They really are alluding to autism and they deal with everything in this movie so unskillfully like women the franchises

they've been gifted well they've purchased but just everything is so shat on it's so it's real disheartening

this movie are you sad that we didn't record this in the jacuzzi that somehow inexplicably came with this hotel room we paid actual Australian dollars for to watch pixels in i it would change the tone i think

a lot if we recorded this in the in the hot tub yeah i mean i feel like i'd fall asleep in a hot tub because the the the heat the steam would be coming off the water yeah i'm pretty sure our knees at least would be touching if not a little bit of that sweet kevin james look at it i'm pretty sure her knees at least would be touching if not a little bit of that sweet kevin james look i just think look at it i'm really glad to do this in a sense because it's fun to watch movies and talk about them but on the other hand i'm just like fuck there was you know that's not that's not coming back no it's empty that time's gone it's so late it's 1.30 on a Tuesday night

like I'm sitting in a hotel room in Melbourne with two other guys talking about pixels I'm like yeah good on us but what like who's in the

who's in the wrong here? I'm just kidding. Because we're as bad as they are. We did ask for it. We did. It's not like we woke up in a room chained to a radiator with this in the middle of the room. Like, we rented the hotel room.

We planned. Like, that doesn't hold up in court. It's like... We put fucking salad bowls under the TV apps to try and make this bullshit louder. You're right. This isn't even manslaughter. This is like straight first-degree murder on our own sanity.

It's like we traveled back in time and kicked ourselves in our own nuts. Fuck. The problem is... Oh, we've done it again, guys. We're fucked up. The thing is, you don't have to watch this again. Nah. See, the thing is, with Sex and the City 2, and Grown Ups 2,

I've seen both of those. I watched the entire Sex and the City show five times front to back because of a girl I was going out with. It was like a show we watched. Eventually, there was so little left in the relationship that the show was all we had. And the show is verdant.

Jesus, Paul. There was so much. It was empty, much like this film, but there was so much in that show and there was so much in those movies, even in their shit, right? Like, there's just such a density of crap whereas in this

it's like biting into a hollow apple there's nothing there you watch this on the second time around you'd be at like episode 45 grade depressed

yeah I think I think you're right what you're sort of flattering Sex and the City 2 there yeah you are a little bit

but at least um hmm tricky how do we uh this movie is better than Sex and the City 2 because it is almost a full hour shorter. Nah.

Sex and the City 2 is better than this. Can I talk about my story for Sex and the City 2, right? So, I know this is off topic, but I was very excited about Tron Legacy. Because I'm a big fan of that aesthetic in the Daft Punk Center. It was fucking great. And Jack Bridges is perfect in everything. And a friend of mine, Luke, was really excited about Tron Legacy.

And so I told him we had tickets to the premiere because we were reviewing films at that point. So I spent a whole night kind of buttering up. We went for dinner. We went for drinks. We go to the Campbell, this beautiful posh suburb. And we go around the corner towards the cinema, this beautiful like Art Deco, turn of the century cinema i i'm aware art deco is in the 40s shut up so we get to the cinema we're around the corner and suddenly there's like news crews everywhere and there's like a thousand women i've taken him to the premiere of sex entity 2 but here's the rub i had a camera crew ready to

film his reactions and follow us through the foyer as we were handed cosmopolitans in plastic glasses and perfume swabs and we had to go down the red carpet dastardly bastardly man it was such my problem was i hadn't seen the first film so it's in a series and the series ends on a really kind of cool note and then the first film has a lot of apparently important stuff and suddenly i reach there and everybody is just like a decaying leather mummy of a husk of their former selves and he was confused and i was angry and we were live tweeting the whole thing we were drunk on cosmopolitans which again was a bit hurt everyone was a bit damaged and so we just kind of hatefully live tweeted the entire experience so my experience of sex in the city 2 is very like event based and i'm concerned that our experience of pixels is going to be equally event based and that we have a receipt for a hotel

room we we've hired yeah there's no denying it's an event based screening yeah there's something nice about that like um i want to just as a comparison briefly bring up uh paul blart mall cop 2 sure which is a film that we watched with the mackler brothers for our award-winning undoubtedly in the future in the next 50 years award-winning podcast talk death to us blart and that movie because we i remember we all got on skype to do the record for that and uh i think it was Travis who opened it up he was like I didn't hate it

and Griffin was so mad and I was like hey I didn't hate it either and I fucking didn't I didn't hate it I hate

pixels I hate it I didn't hate Paul Blart why do you hate it be succinct it destroys good things Why do you hate it? Be succinct. It destroys good things that already exist

and in addition even if it didn't have those franchises it just doesn't make a lick of sense. It's tough to argue with. It's garbage. I mean It's um It's garbage I mean if you're listening to this and Still We know you are

Uh then I'd steer clear I mean sometimes the morbid curiosity Because here's the thing You guys begged us to listen to Paul Bartu To watch Paul Bartu rather Before we listened to the podcast Of Till Death Do Us Blight

I did not Almost spitefully I can't remember what was said. You begged us not to proceed until we watched the film. Right, okay. I adore listening to commentary for films I've never seen. I find it exhilarating. Having to infer a narrative around a film I was never going to watch anyway is great.

So, don't watch Pixels. Nah, I reckon do watch it. Really? Yeah, yeah, I hate it, but definitely watch it. Because, like, everything good is in the trailer. What do you think, Guy? Look, it's your body, your choice. I wouldn't, and I regret doing it.

Deeply. But don't let that color your opinion. You might be someone who loves Pixels, and if that's who you are... Fuck you. No. That's all power to you all right like we fundamentally disagree on a bunch of stuff i'm sure you're probably in the middle of like doing some weird macaroni fan art for donald trump and all power to you it's your right to do that everyone gets to make their own decisions this is what i love about planet earth it'd take a lot of macaroni i think we've got to get you to bed baby boy no you're making way

less sense i'm just starting i'm just the engine's just starting up oh yeah that's the i thought we were wrapping up but i've got to say yeah they fucking open and close the movie with a really cool Cheap Trick song, and it fucked me off too, because I really love that song. Yeah, the soundtrack is largely, it's the kind of soundtrack, as a child, I may have bought on cassette at Brash's. You know what I mean? I don't know what that means.

Oh, Brash's is like a long defunct Australian CD store. Yeah, it's like HMV Records. Yeah, we're still good okay good we just there was a the computer came up with a message

I don't know what it meant hey let's part the kimono quickly and address the sleeping situation cause we've accidentally rented a suite this is the service department boys

and there's a king single in there that's got my name on it and then there's a there's a bit of a double bed there's no need for us to be bashful.

It won't even be the first time this week Guy and I have shared a bed. It's true. We are disturbingly comfortable with that at this point in our relationship. I'm totally cool with it. To be honest though, I'm probably going to get an Uber and sleep in the bed that I'm... The other room that I'm paying for not the hotel room that's fine that's fine i fall stop that's fucking fine i don't want to hurt your feelings or

anything dude i'm gonna sleep better i'm gonna take up that double bed go get breakfast um look i mean the the room is littered with with-related ephemera. We've got a microphone in a bowl. I can't believe you sourced Tui as well. A uniquely New Zealand beverage. Yeah, it's a trick. You've got to make people, you know, isn't your rider? It's like beer awful. Also, let's put an ad right at the end of the podcast for a change

for our sponsor, Big Pipe Broadband, who are awesome and have been supporting the podcast for a change for our sponsor big pipe broadband um who are awesome and have been supporting the show for a long time bigpipe.co.nz if you're moving flats moving into a new place get it in you if you are in a current standing place and you are sick of your internet provider rip it out throw it on the street all right and then remember that you shouldn't let it go pick it up put it in the garbage bin get on the big pipe website you can't do that because you fucking just ripped out your internet modem go next door see what they're using is it big pipe damn right it's big pipe because it's taking over no throttling no throttling no contracts now is big pipe available in australia no yeah fuck man they've got no plans to enter australia that's

irresponsible corporate sabotage. So it's not like another sponsor where maybe they'll be moving over. Okay, so if you're in New Zealand, fucking big plug. Oh, yeah. If you're not in New Zealand, we say this every episode. If you're not one of us, fuck you. Yeah, as always. If you're not in New Zealand, what are you doing with your life?

We're not in New Zealand. Paul, do you have anything you want to get out there? Yeah, 28 Plays Later has a Patreon. It's over at patreon.com forward slash 28 Plays Later and we have a fun fucking little animated short thing which we made and we're going to be in Seattle later this year. Hey, we should also... Yeah?

Sorry, talk more about Seattle feels like there was more no that's it okay we should also briefly because this will be on each other's streams describe

our shows oh you go first the worst idea of all time is the name of Guy and Maya's podcast that's grammatically incorrect and we watch and review the same movie

every week for one year so we did one year of Grown Ups 2 and then a year of Sex and the City 2. We are about to, we're still on break, we're about to embark on a year of We Are Your Friends. We're going to spend a lot of time

with Zac Efron as he tries to make as a DJ in Los Angeles, California. Wait, that was your choice? Yeah. You went with, that was your choice? Yeah. Is that meant to be bad?

It's like middling. I can't wait. You know what? It'll all be explained in an episode. I haven't seen it. It's hard to say. The fans are very divided on if it's, like, I'll get into this later. No, that's an interesting choice.

Very controversial. I was thinking you'd go, like, kind of. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Well, here's the thing. The first film has undeniable charm but I mean is the second one

a garbage you can't just keep going sequels nah but there's a thing everyone thought it was like we just do sequels there's no rules baby

we're making jazz here have you heard of jazz it's what we make 28 plays later yeah with the podcast that plays between the notes yeah

that's really good we're fucking yeah weekly video game podcast my co-host Chris Straub who is far better human than I am is in Seattle

he's got a kid so he's got like real responsibilities so he's real busy but he's also touring and stuff so he couldn't be here also as mentioned he's in Seattle so, so he's got real responsibilities, so he's real busy, but he's also touring and stuff, so he couldn't be here. Also, as mentioned, he's in Seattle. So if you like video games and comedy and whatnot, we do sketches at the start of every podcast,

and we did a live one in Melbourne last year, which I can't express how badly it tanked. I feel like a lot of the sketches are, we have a lot of foley work I feel like a lot of the sketches are, we have a lot of foley work, which does a lot of the lifting. So if you want to see us live, just shut your eyes.

Mate, this is supposed to be an ad for your show. No, it's really good. So yeah, we're on 28playslater.com and we're on iTunes and, you know. It's like pixels in podcast form. Yeah, but without the severe diarrhea. And sometimes even that depending on how quickly we get this

up as well three maybe four shows we'd like to plug Snort if you're in Melbourne very specific if you're in Melbourne

oh yeah if you're not in Melbourne stop listening to the podcast right now go see Snort okay now that all those people have left

how fucking great is Melbourne and how terrible is it everywhere else see an improvised comedy show I do every night called Snort. It's at 9.30. It's in the trade. Oh, fuck, this feels weird.

No, it's all right. Just look up Snort. Go there. Look up Snort with friends on the Melbourne Comedy Festival page. Trades Hall? Trades Hall. I'm doing a solo show every night called Guymon Comedy. What a brilliant name.

What a brilliant show. It's at 6pm. I'd love for you to make it. I've quit comedy and I'm starting a political campaign so just look for the show called Vote Bat, B-A-T-T and you'll find me there but I've only got a few more shows left

well, check all those shows out also, I'm directing my girlfriend Tegan's show, that's right I'm an impartial mediator she's doing a show called Tegan Higginbotham and the City of Love which is all about Paris and what not. So there's this crepe stand, right, that's across the road from the town hall.

And they're very French. Like hyper French. Just beautiful arrogant people. And they're selling crepes. And so I wandered down and I'm like hey, do you guys want to do a cross promotion where like you get a free crepe and you get cheap tickets and they're like... So suddenly like we have an official sponsor for her show.

Love that. And it's like a super French creperie. The big pipe of comedy. Yeah. And crepes are kind of a pipe. Yes. Or more of a comb, but you can't say the big cone.

Cause that's, that's, that's a different evening. Drag reference. Yeah. And we don't care for that. Foo for our. So yeah. Uh, check out Tegan's show.

And also, she's in a sketch show called Watson Life Education Van for Adults. So, you guys had the life education van down in New Zealand? Yeah, mate. Harold the giraffe. Love him. The Americans who comprise most of our audience will have no fucking idea or interest in what we're talking about. Right.

But you're still here. So, suck it up. Keep looking at how much long is left on the podcast app what is that five minutes how do they draw five more minutes out of this by telling you about harold the life giraffe problem is when you're a kid and you're in a caravan with a giraffe it smells like a man's arm and suddenly they tell you you're going to space and a bunch of people outside start shaking the caravan around and making noises.

You'd believe it. It's the magic school bus. But for some reason in New Zealand and Australia you get taught both the birds and the bees and the nature of the universe by a puppeted giraffe. Doesn't make any sense in retrospect, does it? No, no. It's the pixels of explaining stuff to kids.

Hey, quickly before we leave, one thing you enjoyed about the movie, starting with you, Paul. Josh Gad was really funny. Like, really funny. And I think it was his screaming. There is something so great about a larger man screaming and his voice struggling to withhold.

It was just... He's so pure. You know? He was committed. Yeah. And I think he did well, mostly. it was just he's so pure you know he was committed yeah and I think he did well mostly I'm trying to think of

specific things he did that I enjoyed no that's you've done it that's a good shining light alright um

to use you go worst idea parlance I would say it seems mean spirited but just the fact that Dan Aykroyd did get his skull vodka

in the movie tickled me in its brutality. It's just so blatant. It was a big sledgehammer. Yeah, that's good. I really liked some of the Foley work at one point when Josh Gad was singing a song at, what was the function?

It was like a presidential... We were singing Tears for Fears or whatever, and then they go outside, and Adam Sandler's talking with Michelle Moynihan. Yeah, I love interests, woman. Moynihan. And then just very lightly, like probably at 10% volume while they're talking,

you can still hear Josh Gad plugging away inside. And I was like, fuck, yes. Oh, and also, and I know that this, like they planned all of this shit for me to say this, but I did like that there yes. Oh, and also, and I know that this, like, they planned all of this shit for me to say this, but I did like that there was a Paperboy sprite just in the back of shot a couple times as well. Because I used to play that on Commodore 64. It's a good game.

They got you by the balls, Timbette. You have to watch it again for saying that. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. Go and live your life. Stop listening to podcasts or keep doing it. Do the both. I don't know. I'm so tired.