Collision course begins with the acorn chasing squirrel Scrat inadvertently setting off a chain of events leading into the creation of the universe, which I couldn’t understand as how could the animal already exist if he was only creating the universe? but I digress, so he also inadvertently creates a bunch of asteroids, one of which looks set to cause the destruction of all life on the planet. In order to save themselves all our returning heroes once again must set out on an adventure to escape from the impending doom.

I have seen the first two movies but missed out on parts three and four and from what I can remember, the first two felt like an adventure while this left like a journey to find yourself against the backdrop of the apocalypse. Mammoth Manny (Ray Romano) has forgotten his anniversary and his wife Ellie (Queen Latifah) is not best pleased also their daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) who is infatuated with her beau Julian (Adam DeVine) is talking about leaving home and Manny is afraid of both losing his daughter and the fact that Julian is not going to look after her correctly. Sabre-toothed tiger Diego (Denis Leary) and his partner Shira (Jennifer Lopez) are talking about the possibility of starting a family but the young of all other animals seem to fear them. Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) is, as always looking for love in all the wrong places and the one eyed weasel Buck (Simon Pegg) returns as the voice of exposition on their journey.

Anyway the herd must head off on an exploration mission to find out what is drawing this asteroid towards earth and have many moments and mishaps along the way but which rarely raises the excitement levels eventually reaching an area called Geotopia, an exotic new land with a host of colourful new characters which has a large part to play in the ongoing disaster so the friends must join together to overcome the odds and save the day.

It’s hard to critise movies which are essentially made for kids but when done right they can entertain both kids and adults. Unfortunately, while this movie looks great and has more than enough to keep kids happy there seemed to be a lot of characters who were only there to keep the continuity of the franchise going and beneath the themes of maturing as a person and staying loyal to your friends, there wasn’t a lot going on. They did try to throw in some jokes for the grown-ups, but with the odd exception, such as a Pythagoras joke which I laughed at, they just weren’t that good but it won’t stop the next episode appearing in a few years so hopefully they can get back to the fun entertainment of the original.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10

Seth MacFarlane stars as Albert Stark who is dumped by his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) as he is a coward who will not participate in a gunfight. As he is in the saloon contemplating moving from the town of Old Stump, Arizona to San Francisco ,away from what he considers the horrors of the frontier, he saves a woman Anna (Charlize Theron) from death during a brawl however unknown to him this woman is the wife of outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson) so as their friendship develops her secret puts him obviously closer to the dangers he is so keen to escape from.

MacFarlanes second effort on the big screen after Ted is a disappointment in comparison however I still enjoyed it more than his subsequent effort Ted 2, if you can look beyond the obvious flaws the movie has in a poor script and some poorly developed characters, including MacFarlanes. It is only Neil Patrick Harris who is excellent as Foy, Louise’s new beau who along with his moustache preens his way through the movie in one scene stealing performance after another and Theron who feels like she is not actually acting which works a treat, as the scenes with just her an MacFarlane feel like two people having a bit of a laugh instead of acting a scene, who have any real presence on the screen and are central to most of the better moments in the film.

There are so many little meta moments and fourth wall breaks that I laughed aloud quite a few times but in saying that there are too many repeatable jokes and the movie is way too long to keep things interesting. Still feel there is a good base for a western comedy somewhere among the mess and with a little more thought it could have been a lot better.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10

The Secret Life Of Pets gives us a comic look at what a group of New York pets get up to once their owners leave the house each morning. Central to the plot is a Terrier named Max who has a great life with his owner Katie (Ellie Kemper) but his world is turned upside down when Katie brings home another dog Duke (Eric Stonestreet) who quickly takes over. While out with their dog walker one day Duke tricks Max and leads him away planning on abandoning him in the city however they are attached by a gang of alley cats and subsequently caught by Animal Control however while on the way to the pound the van is attacked by a rabbit called Snowball (Kevin Hart) who frees them on the basis that they come to work for him. Duke and Max manage to escape however they end up on a boat to Brooklyn and so begins their adventure to find a way home while being chased by the crazy Snowball and his gang but luckily Sam’s friends are also on the case lead by Pomeranian Gidget (Jenny Slate) who is crazy about Max despite him being oblivious to this fact.

Brought to screen by the same studio that gave us The Minions so you know it’s going to look fantastic and it doesn’t let you down in that sense. The voice acting is really good however Kevin Hart is so over the top as the crazy rabbit, which makes the bunny in Monty Python and The Holy Grail look tame, and he causes so much carnage at times yet at no point is there ever a policeman or police car seen which seemed a little silly. Maybe that’s what the filmmakers were going for and if so then mission accomplished but for me it detracted from the film as it dominated the other aspects of the movie and you really need to let any semblance of brain activity behind to look past the weak plot. Also, given the talent behind the voice works I was expecting more actual comedy in the script and there seems to be a lack of clever, witty one liners that I kept waiting for.

Even taking the movie at face value as a kids film it’s still just okay and nowhere near as good as the recently released Zootopia, your kids will, without doubt, enjoy it as a fun, comic, action romp but there not much for me to recommend for adults unless you’re a real dog lover then you might get a laugh out of hearing them talk through some of their thought processes behind their everyday mannerisms. It left like a bit of a let-down as the premise was there for a great film and my expectations were high, perhaps the inevitable sequel will address this.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10

Greta (Lauren Cohen) arrives in the UK to take a job as a nanny to the Heelshires son Brahms however Brahms is not a child but is a doll with a realistic porcelain face. At first she believes this to be a joke however it is soon apparent that it is all too real and before the Heelshires leave for their holiday they supply Great a list of rules which must be followed without failure.

Not long after the Heelshires have left and Greta has ignored the supplied rules strange things begin to occur around the creepy old house and when Great confides in the grocery delivery man Malcolm (Rupert Evans) who tells her the back story about the human Brahms and his subsequent death so Great believes that the doll is possessed by the spirit of Brahms and begins to treat the doll as initially instructed but where her ex-boyfriend Cole (Ben Robson) shows up and starts to react angrily towards the door going so far as to smashing it the real secret behind Brahms and the house reveals itself.

This is yet another of the creepy doll movies which have become more popular as movie themes but unfortunately this is just as bad, there’s no reasoning behind how the Heelshires bring a woman from the USA to the UK since they don’t seem to have any Internet, there’s no explanation as to who Rupert is any why the Heelshires seem to trust him, there’s the usual moments of jump scares which occur inside a dream which has been done to death at this point. The real star of the movie is the house which always gives a sense of foreboding towards something bad happening, which say a lot for the script and while the twist is at least a little different by that point I didn’t care and of course the ambiguous ending leaves it open for a sequel which I can only hope never sees the light of day.

A sequel to the 2010, hugely successful, Alice in Wonderland movie which somehow managed to bring in over $1 billion worldwide at the box office. This time we find Alice (Mia Wasikowska) on the high seas as captain of her own ship, taking on the elements and pirates just to show that she is no ordinary girl (or woman as she must be now) however when she returns home she finds that, her former beau Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill), has taken over his father’s company and plans to have Alice sell him her father’s ship in exchange for the return of the deeds to her family home. After an argument with her mother over this situation she runs off (again) and follows a butterfly, who she believes to be Absolem from her first adventure, through a magical mirror which brings her back to Wonderland although this time the plot of the book is discarded for a different theme.

All the characters are back again however this time she finds that The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is acting very unusual and his failing health is based on the fact that he now believes that his family, that he initially believed were dead, are still alive so the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) suggests that Alice speaks with Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) to see if he can help in finding out how this occurred but Time is unwilling to assist and advises her that you cannot change the past however Alice steals an instrument called the Chronosphere which allows her to travel back in time to find out what happened to the Hatters family. From that point it becomes a chase across tihe ages as Alice travels back and forward between the real world and Wonderland trying to change the past but inevitably only changing things for the worse which culminates in the Chronosphere falling into the hands of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) who decides to use the instrument to rule all of time.

While Tim Burton managed to create a sense of fantasy around the characters in the first movie this time the characters suffer from a lack of use. It’s all about Alice and unfortunately Wasikowska just doesn’t feel like she is the center point of the movie and is often overshadowed by other characters. Also her portrayal of the grown up Alice still feels childlike. Depp has very litter to do, Bonham Carter is good when on screen but the time is limited and ditto for Hathaway. The rest of the cast are only background noise and the one person who is given any type of center stage is Cohen’s Time character who does a good job as the master of the clock but overall they are battling against a poor script and a seeming lack of vision to bring the same magic to the screen that the first movie had. While not a bad movie it’s not a particular good movie either although I’m sure it will still make a fortune at the box office.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10

I had heard some good things about this movie and I expected a comedic romp starring the aforementioned feline getting into various scrapes, instead this felt like a sketch from stars Kay & Peele which was stretching into movie length with the cat only forming a small sub plot to the film.

Keanu is an adorable kitten, even for a dog person like myself, and once he ends up on the doorstep of Rell (Jordan Peele) who has just been dumped by his girlfriend it’s love at first sight however unknown to Rell, Keanu already has owners in the form of the Allentown Boys (also played by Kay & Peele) who have recently liberated him from a local Mexican cartel boss while carrying out a hit so they want him back. While Rell is on a night out with his cousin Clarence (Key) the house is ransacked and Keanu is missing. The trail leads to local gangster Cheddar (Method Man) who is now in possession of Keanu and in order to get Keanu back Clarence and Rell must adapt new personalities in the form of gang members ‘Tectonic’ and ‘Shark Tank’. Of course it wouldn’t be a movie if it went according to plan so we have to follow the stars as their deception takes them further and further into the underbelly of the city as lie follows more elaborate lie.

Yes, there are some humerous pop culture references and a very funny cameo from Anna Faris but the real laughs are as few and far between as the cat appearances so this feels slightly like false advertising, certainly like a wasted opportunity and at 98 minutes way too long to keep a weak plot interesting as it’s essentially a one joke movie.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10

Bird Island is a happy place inhabited by flightless birds with the exception of Red (Jason Sudeikis) who has bouts of bad temper which lead him to being sent to anger management classes. One day a boat arrives at the island with a group of pigs from nearby Piggy Island who claim they are friendly explorers. The birds welcome them with open arms but the pigs slowly start to take over the island. Seemingly, the only one who is able to notice what the pigs are doing is Red and it is up to him, along with his two friends Bomb (Danny McBride) and Chuck (Josh Gad) to try and stop the pigs.

First things first, this is a kids movie, it’s not aimed at adults so the plays on the pop culture references, toilet humour and barely veiled sex references are a bit amiss here as they will go over kids heads but in saying that the movie will keep your kids entertained for the ninety plus minutes it runs but there were a few moments for me where it all just felt like constant noise and manic animation so I must be showing my ago.

First time directors Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly have previously worked as animators on movies such as Frozen, Tangled, The Smurfs and Hotel Transylvania so in terms of the animation is spot on and it’s by far the strong point of the film. The bird characters all have their own strengths and skills and get the opportunity to have their moment in the sun.

There’s some great voice acting thanks to the quality of the actors involved but advertising Sean Penn is a bit of a cheat (you’ll see what I mean) so it’s still a cash grab movie aimed at your children. In that sense it pulls it off, there’s just not a lot of depth in the story but that won’t stop it making huge amounts of money and leading to the inevitable sequel which is sure to follow.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10

Jason Kelly (Zac Efron) is a straight laced corporate attorney who is planning a marriage to his controlling fiancee Meredith Goldstein (Julianne Hough), while he is attending his grandmother’s funeral he re-acquaints himself with his Grandfather Dick Kelly (Robert DeNiro) whom he used to be very close to as a child but he has had no contact with for a number of years. In order to try and re-establish some form of bond DeNiro asks Efron to drive him on his upcoming trip from Georgia to Florida and despite the pressure from Hough he reluctantly accepts.

Dirty Grandpa starts right from this point in an endless cycle of crudity and close to the bone jokes covering the usual sex and drug references but pushing the boundaries as far as Nazi references and child molestation. Yet strangely it does so without ever really offending or overstepping the mark (unless you’re very prude) and I found myself laughing at some of the gags although perhaps that was in a, so bad it’s humerous, way. Maybe it’s because it’s DeNiro putting in another off center role that he seems to be doing more often than makes it funnier than it should be. Or, maybe it was the influence of director Dan Mazer who co–wrote both Borat and Bruno with Sacha Baron Cohen so perhaps the crassness shouldn’t be a surprise.

As with many other movies in this genre the film is inconsistent, borderline ridiculous and in many ways pointless yet there was a good chemistry between Efron and DeNiro, the comedy, even if it wasn’t great, was well timed and gave some credibility to the bonding moments that the two characters have.

The supporting cast all do what they need to with Aubrey Plaza’s turn as the oversexed Lenore standing out from the rest but it’s still a by the numbers raunchy comedy that flatters to deceive and when the jokes do arrive there are too many misses over the number of hits to raise it above mediocrity yet looking at the box office figures it made a lot of money so don’t be surprised if a sequel appears in the next year or two.

DJ Speaks: 4.5 out Of 10

The sixth movie in the paranormal Activity series sees the Fleege family Ryan (Chris J.Murray), Emily (Brit Shaw) and daughter Leila (Ivy George) move into their new home. It is just before Christmas so they are joined for the festive celebrations by Ryan’s brother Mike (Dan Gill) and Skylar (Olivia Taylor Dudley), a new age hippie type who’s place in the family is never defined (at least not as far as I could ascertain). Mike stumbles across an old video camera and some tapes in the basement. The tapes contain various snippets from the previous movies and when looking through the camera there seems to have a weird effect of seeing shapes which cannot be seen normally while at just about the same time Leila starts speaking with her new friend Toby. Cue the usual speight of strange noises, weird occurrences and shadow appearances which we have seen in the previous movies. Needless to say the situation escalates to the point where the family need to search the history of the house to try and explain what is going on and to save their daughter from being taken by the demon.

It’s about time to put these movies to bed once and for all as this is essentially a cut and paste of pieces of the previous five films with the usual scenes viewed through the point of view of the camera broken up by something zipping across screen, some ridiculously lazy moments in the script where characters suddenly have a way off left of center idea in order to explain a situation and who make ridiculous decisions for people who are in their situation. The one potential redeeming feature this movie is when it is realised that in some of the old video tapes the people on screen are describing the exact scene we are watching in this movie, which is quite an interesting concept and gives some semblance on the linking of the events to the past, is barely touched upon.

This is rumored to be the last movie in the series and on this basis then I hope this is true as it’s time to send this series into another dimension where it can never bother us again.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10