Whether you’re looking for a generous helping of festive family farce or a more cerebral cinema experience that’s literally out of this world, this weekend’s programme at Royston’s Picture Palace is right up your street.

On Friday and Saturday evening the big screen presentation is Interstellar, in which thinking film fan’s blockbuster director Christopher Nolan takes his leading characters through a wormhole in space on a mission to save humanity.

Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain get their names above the title, along with Michael Caine, and there are other familiar faces cropping up in this expansive tale of isolation, exploration, and the essential insignificance of our puny life forms in the greater scheme of things.

As long as you’re happy to sit for the best part of three hours to be taken along by Nolan’s journey, the screening starts at 7.30pm on each evening.

Saturday’s daytime features are sure to be less solemn affairs – there are two chances to see new release Brit comedy Nativity 3: Dude Where’s My Donkey?

It’s the third instalment of a surprisingly successful francise about frantic teachers, charming kids and the scrapes they all get into as they go about staging their annual festive celebration.

It’s fair to say that the critics have not been kind and Martin Clunes, who has stepped into leading man shoes previously occupied by Martin Freeman and David Tennant, doesn’t look very comfortable.

But it’s apparently a real winner with the younger crowd, which explains the performance times of 12.30pm and 3.30pm.

Check out the website at www.roystonpicturepalace.org.uk to book tickets.

On the multiplex front, it’s crass comedy to the fore – Dumb and Dumber To takes a bow, more than a decade after the first follow-up to the Jim Carrey/Jeffy Daniels grossout comedy.

That original film dates from 1994, but the moronic mirth-makers haven’t matured – expect in your face humour that misses the mark as often as it hits the funny bone.

There’s also Night At The Museum: Secret of The Tomb, another franchise feast featuring one of the last performances by Robin Williams along with regular Museum rep company players Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.

Some laughs, lots of special effects, but there’s nothing new in this latest instalment.