Review #500: 'Ice Age: Continental Drift' (2012)

So Manny (Ray Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo), Diego (Denis Leary) et al return for yet another instalment of the hugely successful Ice Age franchise, to explore themes that have been re-cycled from previous films, and re-hash familiar plots. With the continents breaking up around them after a calamitous act by the returning Scrat, Manny is separated from Ellie (Queen Latifah) and his teenage daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) and washed out to sea. With the world seemingly becoming an ocean of floating glaciers, they are picked up by the maniacal pirate Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage), a gigantophithecus who wants to make them walk the plank. They escape, and must form a plan to seal Gutt's boat in order to meet up with Ellie, Peaches, and their wandering herd.

Similar to the plot strand in The Meltdown (2006) involving Manny and Ellie, who was torn given that she thought she was a different animal, Diego meets one of his fellow species Shira (Jennifer Lopez) aboard Gutt's ship, who is dedicated to Gutt's tyrannical rule regardless of how he treats her. Again the writers seem unable to come up with something inventive for Diego so have lumbered him with a shockingly uninvolving love story. Shira is merely one of many new additions, and apart from Dinklage's impressive Gutt and Nick Frost's hilariously brain-dead Flynn, none hit the mark. The introduction of Peaches, who arrived in the third (and best by far) instalment Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) merely causes the film to explore TV-movie themes of family and generation, played out like a middle-class suburban family. Peaches even says to Manny "I wish you weren't my father," before they are separated - yawn!

The creators seem to have lost all respect for themselves and the series after the hopeful third instalment, and have opted for an MTV/Disney Channel aesthetic, bringing in awful pop stars such as Lopez, Nicki Minaj, Drake and Heather Morris to satisfy the young generations' lust for these conveyor belt voices rather than some genuine voice talent. It's quite mystifying as to why they opted to leave out Simon Pegg's Buck (although he is glimpsed for a split second), who was the best thing about the previous film, and instead introduced this endless wave of forgetful characters. Even Scrat, usually a welcome diversion to the central action, is lacking any real ideas and fails to raise a laugh. And the film is wrapped up with an awful rendition of 'We Are Family' sang by the whole cast that caused me to instantly turn the volume down and stop the film as my body was uncontrollably cringing. Simply dreadful, and I doubt I'll continue with the series from now on.


Directed by: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
Voices: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Wanda Sykes, Queen Latifah, Keke Palmer, Peter Dinklage, Jennifer Lopez, Seann William Scott
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie