Name : Sandy Cohen / Alias : Associated Press
Part of the problem is that it's unclear who the filmmakers think their audience is. This is a big-budget spectacle about 1980s nostalgia aimed at kids who have no emotional connection to the decade. Pixels is also insanely sexist.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
"Pixels" may feel flatter to kids of the '80s than it does to moviegoers too young to have known Pac-Man from Ant-Man.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Though "Pixels" may be hard to respect or fully endorse, it's also impossible to dislike.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Within the rarified realm of 1980s videogame nostalgia, Pixels is no Wreck-It-Ralph.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
A dimwitted '80s nostalgia trip best appreciated by those who have waited years for Adam Sandler's fine-grained intelligence and Chris Columbus' filmmaking mastery to finally converge.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Here's a shocker: In Pixels, his latest, Adam Sandler plays a stunted man-child who turns out to be very, very special.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
You get the feeling the boys spent the nine-figure budget on trips to Hooters.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
Sandler doesn't appear to be trying terribly hard, and Gad gets sucked into that humor vacuum, going after laughs with a palpable desperation and adopting Sandler's signature move of yelling for no apparent reason.

Name : Mark Olsen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Some movies are so interminable that it seems they might never end, while others are assembled with such indifference that you are essentially left waiting for them to start. "Pixels" somehow manages both.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Moronic jokes, lame action and depictions of middle-aged neuroses. In other words: a Sandler movie.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Welcome to the End of the World, Adam Sandler-style.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
Nostalgia is a wonder and a cheat. The right touchstone can make the most discerning movie-goer forgive a film as lazy as Pixels. Almost.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
You can see the calculations of the filmmakers - Hey, let's put in a cute kid! Let's add a funny animated sidekick! - but you can't see why they wanted to make this film in the first place.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
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.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Often fun and fanciful, though kids may not get the endless 1980s references.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Pixels plays the Ghostbusters card hard, clothing its warriors in matching jumpsuits and swarming them with cheering New York crowds. But these gestures feel unearned.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Long before you've gotten a nickel's worth of entertainment out of this dumb, unfunny flick, you'll be wishing for the flashing sign that says "Game over."

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Theoretically, this could have been a lot of fun, particular for those with fond memories of '80s video gamery.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
The point of "Pixels" - other than some genuinely thrilling SFX of matter evaporating into digitized blocks of confetti - is the dumb message that guys who peaked in middle school totally deserve hot girlfriends because of their awesome gaming skills

Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
"Pixels" is a special-effects eyeful burdened by the fact that it is also yet another film in which Adam Sandler plays a man-child who somehow turns the head of an attractive woman.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is a film in which a viewer can be forgiven for rooting for the old video game icons to annihilate humanity. God help us if the best savior we can muster is Sandler.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
For a movie that's supposedly about delivering weightless, uncomplicated fun, "Pixels" is an overwhelmingly sad experience.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
It manages to achieve the weird feat of feeling overlong and choppy at the same time, like someone edited the film with a pair of garden shears.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's hard not to look at Pixels and feel like Sandler & Co. missed a huge opportunity here.

Name : Britton Peele / Alias : Dallas Morning News
The experience is an exercise in cringing at bad one-liners and stomaching dumb plot devices before saying, "Aww, look, Q-Bert!"

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Even on its own silly terms, Pixels is not a very good movie; it's painted up like a Ghostbusters-style fantasy-comedy but plays like so many slapdash Happy Madison productions before it.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
This is just a lot of chomp-chomp-chomp and point tallies wafting upward whenever something game-oriented is blown up.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
I see Pixels as a 3D metaphor for Hollywood's digital assault on our eyes and brains. Not funny. Just relentless and exhausting.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Chicago Tribune
"Pixels" is a blast of energetic fun . the novelty of nostalgic video game characters as space invaders sustains the film, thanks to the spectacularly executed and original effects.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
This amiable Ghostbusters knockoff is unusually competent for a Sandler comedy.

Name : John Semley / Alias : Globe and Mail
Pixels is a movie without wit, without jokes, with nothing to say but plenty to regurgitate.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Good-natured, laugh-out-loud fun.