“Pixels,” the action/comedy in which Adam Sandler leads a team of former arcade-game champions to save the world from an invasion of 1980s video-game characters, wants badly to be “Ghostbusters.” Except it doesn’t want to be “Ghostbusters” quite badly enough to make much of an effort, and the end result is an inexpensive-looking, cheerfully lazy semi-adventure. And Sandler is not Bill Murray, to put it mildly.
(Now that I think of it: Both Sandler and Murray could be described as performers in similar terms — effortless, deadpan, a trademark persona. It’s just that Murray’s apparent lack of effort — or, perhaps, the amount of effort he puts into looking like he isn’t trying, or maybe just his naturally funny charisma — adds up to something compelling.