In The Hunter review it was noted that it must be hard for an indie film to get decent coverage when going up against the big summer blockbuster releases, but it seems to be the same for bigger releases too; so spare a thought for poor Ice Age 4: Continental Drift, which is going up against the juggernauts of The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Dark Knight Rises, in one of the worst decisions in the history of cinema releases.
If it was the intention to release something different than the two superhero money machines for a bit of variety, that’s fine, but it’s odd to see a franchise as successful as Ice Age getting such a small amount of advertising and publicity when it’s sure to make money off the kids. Also, erratic stop/start releases (it was officially released on Friday 12th July, but I’m sure it was meant to be out the week before Spider-Man as well?), and having local cinemas swapping and changing the showing times will not help in establishing an audience for this film.
Still, apart from that, is Ice Age 4: Continental Drift a worthy sequel in the long running series? Surprisingly, Yes.
This time around, the main three prehistoric animals we know and love from previous Ice Ages; Manny, Sid and Diego (Everybody Loves Raymond‘s Ray Romano, Romeo + Juliet‘s John Leguizamo, and The Amazing Spider-Man‘s Denis Leary respectively); get separated from the herd they’ve sworn to protect, and washed out to sea, as the continent gets transformed by tectonic activity. Manny’s wife Ellie (Queen Latifah, Chicago) has to lead the herd and their daughter to safety, whilst Manny and co. have to find their way home again, whilst fighting off the dreaded pirates of Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage, Game Of Thrones).
With top notch voice casting and presentation, slick animation and good adult humour for a kids’ film, it’s hard not to like Continental Drift. The cast is a ridiculously fun who’s who in pop-culture today; in addition to the original line-up, we now have Nick Frost (Paul) and Jennifer Lopez (The Back-Up Plan) in the more memorable roles, with special mention going to stand-up Wanda Sykes’ (The New Adventures Of Old Christine) role as Granny sloth. Though Dinklage, as Captain Gutt, is undoubtedly the star of the show; he’s brilliant when you consider it’s Tyrion Lannister from Game Of Thrones. Heck even Nicki Minaj has an extended cameo as a teenage mammoth, and proves Ice Age knows it audience well enough to give something to appeal to everyone watching this movie.
The comedy is great with plenty of kids’ humour to go against the more adult jokes. A personal favourite comes when Manny goes on a rant about his daughter going to see a boy mammoth at a “cool waterfall place”. In an elusion to drugs, it rants “oh no! it’s gateway location! Next she’ll be onto eating berries!”
The adventure genre holds up well, despite using location that are perhaps too similar; there wasn’t too much difference in the land locales, but the iceberg being used for a pirate ship was a tremendous idea, and the pirate animals clashing with the relatively straight-laced original Ice Age characters makes for an interesting swashbuckling dynamic which stays entertaining throughout the movie.
Outside of the main plot of Manny and the other funny ones taking on the monkey pirate king however, it’s rubbish; the majority of life lessons for the kids comes from this side of the movie and, sure, they’re good enough lessons to teach (be respectful to others because they’re different, family is important, etc.), but the trouble is, there’s nothing else to engage you with Ellie leading her herd away from the collapsing, shifting, continent and her daughter being a rubbish friend. There’s also a big problem when none of the herd get any screentime and just sit back and do nothing when it comes to the final fight against the pirate crew (despite having prehistoric hippos, rhinos and warthogs among the group) making it hard to care about them as characters.
It’s very short. If you take off the Simpsons mini-episode at the start (which is easily the best Simpsons cartoon since the movie), Continental Drift clocks in at less than 90 minutes, and considering the amount of faffing about we get with the herd’s storyline, there’s not that much core content in Manny and co.’s plot either. The film relies on the interactions between the animals, and performances of the actors, to bring them to life, which it does, but only in one half of the film; if you cut out that half, and the actual entertainment, there’s only a good 30 minutes of what I would say is decent content; something which is pretty appalling for a 90 minutes movie. Continental Drift is a good film, but they could have done so much more with their runtime.
As entertaining as it is, it’s hard to see where else this franchise can go; we’ve already got too many crap characters at the end of Ice Age 3 (and they’ve added a ton more with this outing), and even ended the nut hunting Scrat’s story pretty well here. It’s relatively cheap to make an Ice Age movie (reportedly $100 million), and it makes a great amount of money back, which means we will sadly see an Ice Age 5; maybe Ice Age 5: Extinction has a reasonable ring to it? In all seriousness though, what else is there to do with the cute cuddly animal market for CGI? The upcoming Madagascar 3 sees those lot trotting around Europe for lord’s sake (not exactly inspiring originality with all the French jokes from the trailers), and there’s just too much saturation now, when they could be going for original concepts like Pixar’s upcoming Brave.
Still, Ice Age: Continental Drift is an entertaining CGI extravaganza that may not get the full attention it deserves, even though time is starting to creep on Manny and friends and extinction may be a wise move for the Ice Age franchise. If this is the swansong for this series though, it’s entertaining enough to hold a candle up to earlier entries, and for half a film, the good far outweighs the bad.
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
