By Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Chuck E. Cheese is all grown-up. Sort of.

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Brea Mall is now home to a Chuck’s Arcade, the first location in California and 10th in the U.S. When the company unveiled the concept earlier this year, headlines branded it as an “adult” Chuck E. Cheese. There’s some truth in that, but it’s not the full story.

Combine the word “adult” and “arcade” and recognizable spaces — say, Dave & Buster’s — instantly come to mind. Here in SoCal, we also have Two Bit Circus in Santa Monica, which marries retro and modern games with beer and cocktails. Chuck’s Arcade isn’t all that similar to either.

But we were intrigued by its promise of retro gaming and its attempts to appeal to a less kid-focused audience. You won’t, for instance, encounter a pizza party full of 7-year-olds here.

So what will you find? And will it possess the vintage arcade vibes many of us are craving? With the company and its mouse mascot now a cool 48 years old, we weren’t sure what to expect. So we took a visit to Chuck’s Arcade seeking answers.

Where an adult can be a ‘kidult’

It’s not surprising to encounter a grown-up with fond memories of Chuck E. Cheese. For me, I was hooked by the stilted-yet-charming robotic performances from their once ubiquitous animatronic bands, in which tunes were delivered amid the clickety-clack of machinery. Yet a Chuck E. Cheese today is a fully-realized kid-focused video-game-inspired rec room, one where digital floors encourage a more active form of play. David McKillips, president and chief executive of the company, says the firm’s core locations heavily target those between the ages of 3 and 8.

And thus, Chuck’s Arcade, says McKillips, will fill a void. He’s hoping it taps into the marketing segment known as the “kidult” — grown-ups, perhaps, who were raised on games and still cherish the thought of crowding around a “Ms. Pac-Man” console. The kidult sector is booming, encompassing everyone from the so-called “Disney adult” to those who carry a Labubu doll as a fashion accessory. Think anyone who believes that a childlike openness to play and silliness doesn’t have to be eradicated by maturity.

So how does Chuck’s Arcade plan to reach the kidult? Its 3,600-square-foot space boasts 70 games, including a small — emphasis on small — retro section where one will find coin-op cabinets of “Tron,” “Centipede,” “Mortal Kombat” and a “Ms. Pac-Man” head-to-head arcade table. And while a modern Chuck E. Cheese is school-cafeteria bright, Chuck’s Arcade is dark, its black walls and low lighting recalling the arcades of the ’80s and ’90s.

McKillips says Chuck’s Arcade “is appealing to the collectible market,” betting large on grown-ups being drawn to its plethora of claw machines. There are also prize apparatuses dedicated largely to Funko’s plastic figurines.

It’s near the mall food court — which is part of the business strategy

The Chuck E. Cheese company has long had it eye on the Brea Mall.

In an era when malls are being refocused to cater to a more experience-based economy — see, for instance, the escape rooms of Westfield Century City, or Meow Wolf eventually taking over a portion of what is currently the Cinemark complex at Howard Hughes L.A. — Chuck E. Cheese saw an opportunity in Orange County.

“We’ve been trying to get in here for a year and a half,” says McKillips. “The foot traffic is phenomenal. The anchors are strong. They have a really solid food court.”

The food court was a massive selling point.

“That’s where teens are congregating,” he says. “That’s where parents and kids are together. They’ll have a bite to eat and come over and play some games.”

There’s no booze … or even pizza

Here’s one way to think about Chuck’s Arcade: Imagine a Chuck E. Cheese, but subtract the pizza and detract the drinks. In one corner of Chuck’s Arcade rests a giant Skittles machine, and there is more candy available at the front counter. But the company decided to go without a proper food and beverage program for Chuck’s Arcade, meaning those grown-up kidults won’t be sipping on booze or mocktails.

I told McKillips I was surprised. At home, I’m more than 40 hours into “Donkey Kong Bananza,” but I wind down by playing the game and enjoying a beer — one of the core benefits, I believe, of being a certified kidult.

McKillips argues this is actually an advantage for Chuck’s Arcade, allowing it to reach a grown-up audience but still feel family-friendly. Just one Chuck’s Arcade, he says, is equipped to serve beer, wings and pizza, and it’s in Kansas City, Mo.

“This is an arcade destination,” he adds. “We’re not hosting birthday parties. We don’t do [food & beverage] here. You’re going to come here and play games.”

Where’s the nostalgia?

I should be the audience for Chuck’s Arcade. I have fond memories of the brand.

Chuck E. Cheese, the character and the pizza chain, was the brainchild of Nolan Bushnell, best known as the founder of Atari. The franchise launched in 1977 in San José, first branded as Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre. As Chuck E. Cheese flourished throughout the early ’80s, the original animatronic figures were a bit more bawdy (Chuck was a smoker). Bushnell envisioned the initial Chuck E. Cheese robotic characters as entertainment that appealed to the grown-ups while the kids played games in the neighboring room.

When I first heard of Chuck’s Arcade, I hoped the company was getting back a bit to its roots. And there’s a nostalgic touch here and there. Aside from the aforementioned selection of vintage games, there’s also a Mr. Munch figurine, who is displayed in a clear case and does not turn on. Munch, a friendly, purple-ish hairball of a creature, was once the anchor of Chuck E. Cheese’s Make Believe Band.

Seeing that one figure treated as a museum piece felt like a half-hearted wave to fans who grew up with Chuck. And while claw gizmos and plastic figurines aren’t my thing, I understand their popularity and wouldn’t mind their presence if there was a greater supply of old-school games, and perhaps some pinball machines.

With a digital key card for Chuck’s Arcade starting at $10, the buy-in to try out the space isn’t large, but this felt like a tentative step into adulthood. After all, Chuck is well beyond drinking age. The mouse deserves a cocktail.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. job market was much weaker in 2024 and early this year than originally reported, adding to concerns about the health of the nation’s economy.

Employers added 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March 2025, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.

The department issues the so-called benchmark revisions every year. They are intended to better account for new businesses and ones that had gone out of business. The numbers issued Tuesday are preliminary. Final revisions will come out in February 2026.

The revision showed that leisure and hospitality firms — including hotels and restaurants — added 176,000 fewer jobs than originally reported, professional and business services companies 158,000 fewer and retailers 126,000 fewer.

The report comes after the department reported Friday that the economy generated just 22,000 jobs in August, adding to fears that President Donald Trump’s erratic economic policies, including massive and unpredictable taxes on imports, have created so much uncertainty that businesses are reluctant to hire.

Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets said the revisions painted “a much weaker portrait of the job market than initially thought. While the revision doesn’t say much about what has happened since March, it suggests the labor market had less momentum heading into the trade war. And, recent data suggest the market has downshifted further.″ Since March, monthly job creation has decelerated to an average 53,000.

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When the benchmark revisions last year showed 818,000 fewer jobs in the year ended March 2024, then-presidential candidate Trump declared the numbers had been rigged to conceal economic weakness and help Democrats in the 2024 election. However, he did not explain why the government would release the revised numbers two and a half months before voters went to the polls.

The revisions will likely increase pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at its meeting later this month to give the economy a boost.

After the Labor Department issued a disappointing jobs report for July, Trump fired the economist in charge of compiling numbers and nominated a loyalist to replace her. He was especially enraged by revisions that took 258,000 jobs off May and June payrolls.

Government economists have been struggling with a dramatic drop in the number of employers that respond to their surveys. Still, most economists and financial analysts consider the official jobs numbers reliable.

By JAKE COYLE

TORONTO (AP) — The morning after Rian Johnson premiered his latest whodunit “Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” he and one of his stars, Glenn Close, were debating billing.

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Not among the main cast, which considering all the stars in “Wake Up, Dead Man” — Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, to name a few — would be a headache for any filmmaker to sort. But for an uncredited one: Close’s dog, Pip, who very briefly appears in the movie.

“And he’s got a pain in the butt for an agent,” chuckles Johnson.

In each “Knives Out” movie, Johnson has assembled some of his favorite actors and managed to give nearly all of them a moment to shine. “Wake Up, Dead Man” is no different; there are numerous standout performances. But one of them, most definitely, is Close’s, whose connections to Johnson’s film run deeper than her Havanese’s cameo.

“When Rian called, it was so thrilling,” Close says. “I had heard about what a good guy he was before I talked to him. And to be on set with him was really something. It’s such a delicate chemistry when you’re putting a cast together.”

In “Wake Up, Dead Man,” Johnson, drawing on G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries, shifts from the Greek isles of “Glass Onion” to an upstate New York church. A young priest named Jud Duplenticy (O’Connor) has been sent to aid a flagging church led by Brolin’s monsignor, a charismatic but tyrannical figure. Much of the cast make up his loyal flock, with Close’s Martha Delacroix as his most devout follower.

“Knives Out” has forged its own community. When “Wake Up, Dead Man” premiered over the weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was the third of the three movies to launch here, and the most eagerly anticipated film of the festival. The movie, which Netflix will release in theaters Nov. 26 before it streams two weeks later, has plenty of the comic elements of the first two “Knives Out” films. But it’s less satirical when it comes to questions of faith and belief.

“For me, that’s where this whole thing came from,” Johnson says. “I grew up Protestant and what we’d now term evangelical. I was very Christian growing up and not just my parents dragging me to church. Through my early 20s, I really was entirely in it and framed the world around through my relationship with Christ. It was a big, big part of my life. And it’s not anymore. But anyone who is a lapsed Christian, you still carry so much with you.”

And it’s this backdrop of sincere reckoning with religion that makes “Wake Up, Dead Man” more than a simple part for the 78-year-old Close. When Close was 7, her parents moved from Greenwich, Connecticut, to join with Moral Re-Armament, a religious movement Close has called a cult. For years, it dictated much of her life, including what she wore and said. Close later joined with an outgrowth of that movement, the conservative performance troupe Up With People, before quitting at age 22. Acting, she has said, saved her.

Glenn Close arrives on the red carpet to promote the film “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” at the Toronto International Film Festival, in Toronto, Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

“I just think religion has been responsible for most of the horrible things human beings have done to each other,” Close says. “It’s very hard for me not to look at religion as a way of controlling people. It’s more political for me. I do think there’s something in the human psyche that we don’t know who we are, where we came from and where we’re going. I think we’re tribal creatures and the comfort you can get from a community, whether religious or not, is palpable.”

When Johnson decided to reach out to Close for the role, he was aware of her history. But his reasons were simpler. He hoped to cast Close, he says, because “she’s one of the best actors of our generation.”

“The truth is, it’s a part that calls for somebody who can both have fun with a certain degree of archness with it but ultimately can land the real emotional truth,” says Johnson. “And that’s a very, very tall order.”

The less said, the better is generally the case with the narratives of the “Knives Out” movies. But it’s fair to say that Close, after making an impeccably timed entrance, fills Martha with an uncommon amount of depth in a performance ranging from comic to tragic.

“I love characters that have this crazy belief that others can look from the outside and say, ‘Whoa, that’s over the top.’ But it’s real,” says Close, whose celebrated career has included films like “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Fatal Attraction.”

From the first “Knives Out,” Johnson set out to draw Agatha Christie-style mysteries — usually quaint period pieces — into the present day. Though “Wake Up, Dead Man” doesn’t sharpen its knives for Christianity quite the way the previous films did for MAGA hat-wearers in “Knives Out” or tech bros in “Glass Onion,” it doesn’t ignore political connections, either. There’s a DOGE mention, among other references.

“When you talk about Christianity in America today, it’s hard not to talk about politics,” says Johnson. “For me, growing up in the evangelical church, right into the rise of Reaganism, it was kind of the crucible of the Christian right. I obviously have a lot of thoughts about that, but I also grew up with a very personal relationship with Christ. I also have a deep feeling about the stuff I took from Christianity that’s positive, which is largely just the stuff Jesus actually said, is exactly what the world most needs right now. And that’s the irony of it.”

Johnson adds: “You’re trying to thread the needle in terms of having an actual conversation about this, instead of just wagging your finger and saying ‘How could you think this, or how can you think that?’ on both sides.”

Murder mysteries ultimately deal in justice and meting out moral determinations. But “Wake Up, Dead Man” makes room, also, for understanding and grace in a way that, in many ways, goes against whodunit conventions.

“I really believe the hardest thing for a human being to do is to forgive,” Close says. “And I’m not even talking in a religious context. Especially now. It goes so against our basest instincts. When you forgive, you stop the circle.”

Now that “Knives Out” has become a trilogy, or, rather, a trinity, it’s natural to wonder if “Wake Up, Dead Man” is also closing a loop for Johnson. The writer-director has begun writing something original outside of the series, but, he says, that doesn’t mean he’s moving on.

Daniel Craig attends the premiere of “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” at the Princess of Wales Theatre during the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025, in Toronto. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

“Three is the smallest number where you can establish and then break a pattern. For me, it was largely about showing how these movies can be anything,” Johnson says. “It’s not so much the closing of a chapter, so much as the promise, hopefully, that as long as Daniel and I can keep getting ourselves excited about these things, we can keep making them.”

“Wake Up, Dead Man,” of course, also brings some parts of Close’s life full circle. When Martha’s big moment comes in a dramatic scene inside the church, Close says, “the thing that was kind of a surprise was how real it became.”

“To go into new territory, that’s what it’s all about for me,” says Close. “And Martha is certainly new territory. New old territory.”

By ISABELLA VOLMERT, Associated Press

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan judge dismissed criminal charges Tuesday against a group of people who were accused of attempting to falsely certifying President Donald Trump as the winner of the 2020 election in the battleground state, a major blow to prosecutors as similar cases in four other states have been muddied with setbacks.

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District Court Judge Kristen D. Simmons said in a court hearing that the 15 Republicans accused will not face trial. The case has dragged through the courts since Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, announced the charges over two years ago.

Simmons said she saw no intent to commit fraud in the defendants’ actions. Whether they were “right, wrong or indifferent,” they “seriously believed” there were problems with the election, the judge said.

“I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,” Simmons said.

Each member of the group, which included a few high profile members of the Republican Party in Michigan, faced eight charges of forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. The top felony charges carried a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

Supporters, friends and family crowded in the hallway outside the courtroom cheered when the judge said the cases would be dismissed. Defendants leaving the courtroom cried and hugged friends and family. One woman wept as she hugged another and said, “We did it.”

Investigators said the group met at the Michigan GOP headquarters in December of 2020 and signed a document falsely stating they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified electors.” President Joe Biden won Michigan by nearly 155,000 votes, a result confirmed by a GOP-led state Senate investigation in 2021.

Electors are part of the 538-member Electoral College that officially elects the president of the United States. In 48 states, electors vote for the candidate who won the popular vote. In Nebraska and Maine, elector votes are awarded based on congressional district and statewide results.

One man accused in the Michigan case had the charges against him dropped after he agreed to cooperate with the state attorney general’s office in October 2023. The other 15 defendants pleaded not guilty and have maintained that their actions were not illegal.

Prominent Michigan MAGA activist and former Michigan Republican Party Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock was one of the accused. Her attorney, Nicholas Somberg, told reporters after the hearing that the case brought by the attorney general’s office was a waste of money and a “malicious prosecution.”

“There needs to be major consequences for the people who brought this,” he said.

Simmons, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, took nearly a year to say whether there was sufficient evidence to bring the cases to trial following a series of lengthy preliminary hearings. In her remarks Tuesday, Simmons said the case was not about who won the 2020 election, but about the intent of the people charged.

“This is not an election interference case,” she said.

Prosecutors in Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme. None of the cases have neared the trial stage and many have been bogged down by procedural and appellate delays.

In Nevada, the state attorney general revived a case against a group of allegedly fake electors last year, while a judge in Arizona ordered a similar case back to a grand jury in May. In Wisconsin last month, a judge declined to dismiss felony charges against three Trump allies connected to a plan to falsely cast electoral ballots for Trump even though Biden won the state in 2020.

The Georgia prosecution is essentially on hold while Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Atlanta, who brought the charges against President Trump and others appeals her removal from the case. Technically, Trump is still a defendant in the case, but as the sitting president, it is highly unlikely that any prosecution against him could proceed while he’s in office.

The effort to secure fake electors was central to the federal indictment against Trump that was abandoned earlier this year shortly before Trump took office for his second term.