In the first edition of the 2015 Summer Movie Recap Column, I take a look at Adam Sandler’s latest flick, “Pixels.”

This movie had so much potential, and then they casted Adam Sandler and it all went downhill.  In “Pixels,” Sandler plays an immature adult who can’t get over the fact he lost a video game tournament in the 80s.  At that video game tournament the creators send a time capsule up to outer space of Sandler and his pals playing video games. An alien race finds the capsule and mistakes it as an invitation for war.

After 30 years, they send an army of those video game characters to come destroy earth, and only Sandler, Gad and his friends can save them. When I first saw this trailer earlier in the year, I felt like this film had a lot of potential, and I thought it could be a fun nostalgic trip. Unfortunately this film, fails at any expectations you have. This film does a major crime to cinema, which is that it doesn’t make anyone laugh. That is the one thing you have to have in big blockbuster comedy. “Pixels” is so lazy and wasteful that it almost seems as it Sandler just doesn’t want to try to make decent comedies anymore.

It almost seems as if he is just making films for him to laugh at and doesn’t care about his audience at all. He just struck a deal to make films with streaming heavyweight Netflix – probably because Sony Pictures was sick of losing money for all his awful films in the past 10 years. I really have enjoyed Josh Gad’s work so far, but he’s downright annoying in this film.

Kevin James is the president of the United States and his character is just bizarre. This film could have been a nice tribute to older video games and the gaming culture. But it’s just so awful that it can’t even serve as that. I would say do not spend money on this cheap, lack-luster film.

If you are really interested in this film, rent it when it comes to Redbox. Otherwise, “Pixels” is a very wasteful, could-have-been blockbuster film that just isn’t funny.