BEFORE: The animation category is almost cleared. Again. Last night's film featured dinosaurs and mammals impossibly co-existing, and that's a plothole last seen in the "Ice Age" series, so to me that's an obvious segue. Linking from "Dinosaur", Alfre Woodard was also in "Beauty Shop" with Queen Latifah (last seen in "The Bone Collector").
THE PLOT: Manny, Diego, and Sid embark upon another adventure after their continent is set adrift. Using an iceberg as a ship, they encounter sea creatures and battle pirates as they explore a new world.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" (Movie #525)
AFTER: See, now I've got proof that all of the Hollywood studios are working from the same playbook. (Yeah, I kind of had that before, but still...) Last night's film featured dinosaurs trekking through a desert to reach their nesting grounds, and tonight's film has prehistoric mammals trekking over rugged terrain to reach a landbridge. By Hollywood standards, those are totally different - but if you watch several of these films in a row, they all start to feel the same. Still, in the talking animal genre, you could do a lot worse - trust me, I have.
"Ice Age" is on its fourth film, and its fourth time playing on the "We're separated, we have to find each other" trope. (And its fourth film where Skrat fails to catch an acorn...gettin' a little tired) But I think someone realized they were telling the same story again and again, because they added a subplot that riffs off of pirate movies. A more cynical person would imagine they were trying to leech some audience off of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, but in the end it's what makes this installment stand out. (For an industry that hates movie piracy, they sure make a lot of films about the regular kind...)
Good villains make good heroes, and this series was definitely in need of a good villain. A nasty-looking pirate monkey who rides galleon-shaped icebergs, and also jet-skis on narwhals? That's a good villain. And good voice-casting, too!
On the negative side, it's filled with junk science. It's bad enough that the 3rd film mixed dinosaurs and mammals, but now they've thrown plate-tectonics into the mix. I'll allow that our cast of characters may have lived on Pangea, but the separation of the continents took millions of years, and here it happens more or less overnight. I know, they have to sell the idea to kids, but there's no reason to jettison our collective scientific theories for the sake of a few jokes. And yeah, there was a landbridge to America, but again, that appeared and disappeared over eons - and I'm pretty sure it didn't resemble a highway bridge.
But hey, it turns out water drains upwards, mammoths sleep in trees, you can survive at the Earth's core, and you can sail from Asia to America and wind up in New York. But as I said, it's a lot of fun, so turn off your mind, relax and float UPstream.
Also starring the voices of Ray Romano (last seen in "Welcome to Mooseport"), John Leguizamo (last seen in "Summer of Sam"), Denis Leary (last seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man"), Wanda Sykes (last heard in "Rio"), Peter Dinklage (last seen in "The Station Agent"), Jennifer Lopez (last seen in "U Turn"), Josh Gad (last seen in "Love & Other Drugs"), Aziz Ansari, Nick Frost (last seen in "Shaun of the Dead"), Simon Pegg (ditto), Drake (last seen in "Anchorman 2"), Nicki Minaj, Seann William Scott (last seen in "Goon"), with cameos from Patrick Stewart (last seen in "The Wolverine"), Alan Tudyk (last heard in "Wreck-It Ralph"), Joy Behar, Rebel Wilson (last seen in "Pitch Perfect").
RATING: 6 out of 10 hang-gliding chipmunks
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