The latest offering from Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison production house has earth under attack from aliens who after misinterpreting a signal sent back in 1982 decide to respond to the challenge and send various characters and ships from 1980’s arcade games to attack the planet. Now, if you think that has promise then let me tell you, that’s as good as it gets as the plot involves Kevin James as US president and Adam Sandler as his best friend, an ex arcade video game prodigy, who now installs home theatres systems, who have to save the day. It’s a pity as the premise if good it’s just that the story is awful.

I remember the days of pumping money into arcade machines so this should have been right up my alley but it’s a long, long time since Adam Sandler released good comedy movies so while I did find myself giggling from time to time, this was mainly for nostalgic reasons (like paperboy hurling newspapers at people during a city attack) rather than for any comedic reason. Peter Dinklage is the one bright spark in this movie as he lays the cheese on to the max and if Best Supporting Mullet was an Oscar category he’d have won this years award hands down.

It’s better than some of the more recent Sandler efforts but that’s not really any praise to receive so I can’t recommend this at all, not even in a ‘It’s so bad, it’s good way’ because your kids won’t get most of the references for the jokes, and I’m hoping this movie was aimed at kids because there’s nothing here for any adult apart from a little time spent reminiscing of long hours battling on screen with these characters in your youth but if you remember back that far I don’t think you’d be in the target audience age range for most Adam Sandler movies. Now pass this old man his pipe and slippers, it’s time for my nap and you kids these days don’t know how good you have it with your online walkthroughs and save points!

DJ Speaks Rating: 3.5 out of 10