Review #1,155: 'Ice Age: Collision Course' (2016)

Yes, you read the title correctly. A fifth entry into the series which began in 2002 with Ice Age somehow stumbled onto cinema screens last year to find that even the target audience may have become fatigued by the increasingly cuddly and decreasingly funny franchise, as its box office pulled in far fewer dollars than was expected. You would be forgiven if you weren't even aware of this movie, as I doubt even the most loyal of fans were screaming out for more following the limp Continental Drift in 2012. Having covered just about every historical disaster to hit the globe without any sense of timeline, writers Michael J. Wilson, Michael Berg and Yoni Brenner have decided to make one up, and that is after sending one of its most recognisable characters into space.

That character is Scrat, the saber-tooth squirrel whose neverending quest to get his hands on that evasive acorn always proved to be a welcome distraction whenever the central story became too tedious or sentimental. After stumbling upon an alien spaceship glimpsed in the first movie, he accidentally switches it on and is blasted into the cosmos, playing pinball with the planets and forming the Milky Way. Before you can say "hey, that doesn't make any sense!", Scrat sends a meteorite hurtling towards Earth, just as Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano) realises he has forgotten his anniversary while stressing about his grown-up daughter's relationship with the goofy Julian (Adam Devine). Collision Course is happy to meander along like a prehistoric sitcom.

It's quite clear that directors Mike Thurmeier and Galen T. Chu are convinced that by simply throwing more characters into this already overstuffed universe will distract the audience from the sheer lack of imagination and actual jokes. Returning are Ellie (Queen Latifah), Manny's wife; ground sloth Sid (John Leguizamo) who is feeling lovelorn after being dumped; saber-tooth tiger Diego (Denis Leary), who seems to be teaching his girlfriend Shira (Jennifer Lopez) that eating meat is bad; opossum brothers and comic-relief Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck); and wise-cracking screwball Granny (Wanda Sykes). As the meteor heads closer to Earth, the Herd come across Buck (Simon Pegg), the unhinged weasel still living in the secret Jurassic world last seen in Dawn of the Dinosaurs, who inadvertently invites a trio of pissed-off dromaeosaurs (voiced by Nick Offerman, Stephanie Beatiz and Max Greenfield) onto their trail. It's all too much - Lopez must have about 5 lines throughout the entire film - and I'm not even covering the new set of characters introduced near the end.

There's plenty of forward momentum and what must be a world-record of fart and arse gags to distract unfussy children, but there is next to nothing to keep the grown-up audience entertained. In an age where The Lego Movie can make profound statements about the nature of corporate culture and Zootopia can ask some serious questions about race relations, you would find deeper life-lessons in an episode of The King of Queens than you will find in Collision Course. Demonstrating an understanding of the laws of physics on par with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, the education here is purely familial, with Manny undergoing the same learning curve as he has in every previous instalment. While the animation may be lovely and polished, the sheer lack of effort by Blue Sky Studios to deliver anything but a piece of colourful fluff to keep the cash machine fully stocked and operational is unforgivable. When you find yourself rooting for the asteroid to end of this nonsense once and for all, it's clear that the franchise is now done.


Directed by: Mike Thurmeier, Galen T. Chu
Voices: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Keke Palmer, Simon Pegg, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Adam Devine, Wanda Sykes
Country: USA

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie

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