Sometimes in professional animation
you can get some inventive and emotional storytelling. Films like “Toy Story”,
“Beauty and the Beast” and even “How to Train Your Dragon” were all wonderful
examples of clever narrative crafting, combined with an innovation visual
design. Sometimes when you go to see a movie with your kids you don’t have to
take out your grown-up brain to enjoy it. Unfortunately, more times than not, you
get “Ice Age: Continental Drift” instead.
Of course, this movie is a sequel to
a ten year old, inexplicably popular CGI animated franchise from Twentieth
Century Fox. Actually, this film is the
fourth in the series and as you would expect the energy is tepid, the
performances are uninspired and the plot is on autopilot.
Within “Ice Age: Continental Drift”
the old cast of characters have
returned, including Manny the mastodon (Ray Romano), Diego the saber-toothed
tiger (Dennis Leary) and Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo). Scrat the saber-thoothed
rat is sprinkled in there as well. Early
in the story we are also introduced to some new teenage mammoths voiced the by famous
hip-hop artists Nicki Manaj and Drake, neither of which ever sing or rap in
this movie.
The situation here is simply a
reverse “Finding Nemo” story where Manny gets separated from his family after
getting into an argument with his teenage daughter over how much freedom she
should be allowed. The earthquake effects of continental drift divides their
ice-burg home and sets Manny and his friends adrift in the ocean, where they
encounter a hostile bunch of animal pirates, voiced by the likes of Nick Frost,
Peter Dinklage, and Jennifer Lopez. In order to get back home they have to
figure out a way to steal the pirate’s ship while also dealing with Diego’s
growing interest in Lopez as a female saber-tooth. At the same time they have to drag
along Sid’s wildly obnoxious grandmother, voiced by the wildly obnoxious
comedian Wanda Sykes.
This cartoon is peppered with star
voice talent and in just describing the plot one ends up dropping enough names
to require a Dirt Devil by the time you’re done. However, this movie doesn’t
utilize any of these voices in a way that allows for any of those celebrities
to bring whatever appeal it is that led them being cast. The plot is slight and
lazy, the steaks are low and the climax resolves with a gigantic face-palming
dues-ex-machina.
Despite the
story having nothing to engage me, did I find any of this funny or laugh worthy?
The answer to that would be not very much. I chuckled a few times at Nick Frost
as a mentally deficient elephant seal and at the idea of Drake’s mammoth
character having bleached tips. Scrat brings some enjoyable slapstick as well
and it’s somewhat encouraging to see chunks of this animation that doesn’t rely
on dialogue. Unfortunately the rest of characters do talk and there’re all
needlessly loud and sarcastic through most of the film.
Nothing in this fourth Ice Age is
really worth recommending for adults, but the kiddies are more than likely to be
happy with this. The animation is fine, but not noteworthy and the action
scenes are frenetic and frequent enough to keep the wiper-snappers from getting
fussy in their theater seats. But you
should do yourselves a favor and save your money for the eventual DVD rental and
instead take the kids to see “Brave” again.
Grade: D+
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2012
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