Movie: Ice Age - Collision Course Director - Mike Thurmeier Voice cast - Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Simon Pegg, Jennifer Lopez Rating - 3/5 |
Watching the fifth Ice Age movie is almost like going to a high school reunion. Except, you've bumped into most of them periodically over the last decade and a half, so it's not quite awkward. What that does manage, though, is that it sets the bar rather high - old school nostalgia and reuniony stuff like uniforms and year books just won't cut it. You walk in expecting the works. The prehistoric kind.
By that timbre, Collision Course isn't anywhere as engaging a story as the first three movies in the animated franchise. What makes it watchable enough is a slew of good gags, lots of laughs and a liberal smattering of digs at pop culture - all of which set it firmly in the space between a kids' feature and a film that adults can enjoy.
All the regular paleo-offendors are in attendance. Especially since Ice Age is probably one of the few franchises that hasn't had a character 'moving towards the light', like ever. Manny the mammoth (familiar grumpy territory now for Ray Romano) and Diego (Dennis Leary) are at that stage where they meet for drinks at the watering hole and crib about wives, kids and matters of the herd. Manny has daughter issues - the kind where he has an issue with his prospective mammoth son-in-law Julian, who's about as ghetto as they come in the Ice Age. And as always, Sid the sloth (voiced by the the affable John Leguizamo) is having trouble fighting the women off - from leaving him, that is.
All's swell with the herd until Skrat, that universally beloved acorn-chasing squirrel launches a buried spaceship, realigns the universe, starts an asteroid shower that is going to destroy life on earth and so on. It's fairly textbook Ice Age survival mode from that point in. With film franchises that require as much thought, work and animation as this one does, there is always the risk that your plots might be stretched a little too far. If the last movie Continental Drift pushed that line, Collision Course is way past it.
But as always, the little touches, like Manny's struggle to let his daughter go, the theory that old asteroids that have crashed on earth are attracting newly formed ones like a magnet and a llama who's steeped in yoga, that keep you laughing all the way through. And that's the saving grace here. The writing is clever that way, even if the screenplay is a prehistoric damp squib. The animation, as always, is top of the line. Goes without saying, really.
With Director Mike Thurmeier keeping the character arcs and new additions to a bare minimum, Skrat's intergalactic antics and the inimitable, wild, one-eyed weasel Buck (voiced by the underrated but brilliant Simon Pegg, last seen in the Mission Impossible movies) also make the movie worth watching. In the sequels to come, and I'm sure there will be quite a few, perhaps it may just be prudent to work with material that's not too out worldly. Literally.
In reunion terms, Ice Age - Collision Course is like meeting your high school sweetheart and bonding over dinner and a protracted slow dance but still finding yourself checking your phone to see if it's time to go home.
Verdict - If you're an Ice Age fan, you'll like it anyway. If you're not, you'll still be able to endure it till you get the to sappy, drawn out ending.