Ice Age 4: attack of the colons

  It was more out of a wish to just go to the cinema that brought my friend and I to see Ice Age 4. It helps that with our unlimited cards it didn’t cost us anything. So it’s fair to say that had it not been for good timing and (pretty much) free entry I wouldn’t have seen it at all.

  We were pleasantly surprised by a Simpson’s short before the main film which neither of us had known about prior to coming. It centred around Maggie and was a story told without words, something I always have immense respect for. I won’t go in to more detail but I felt it worth giving a brief mention.

  Ice Age 4 is pretty much the film you expect it to be. Nothing overly clever and something just thrown together to get a bit more cash. It had its moments but in the end was pretty mediocre.

I kind of appreciate their efforts to put the main trio back together, separating them from Queen Latifah mammoth, Teenage mammoth and the two hyper-active possums.

  The trio end up floating away on a piece of ice, quickly finding that Sid’s granny has somehow ended up on board. And yes, she stays with them for the remainder of the movie. She’s incredibly shoehorned in. (Sid’s family literally appears out of nowhere and seeing an opportunity to abandon her with Sid, they run off again.) And yet surprisingly she’s not as horrible as she could have been, probably thanks to the distinctive voice work of Wanda Sykes.

  Shortly after we’re greeted by the deep tones of Peter Dinklage on his turn at an Ice Age character, along with a pirate ship full of animals. Now here is my issue with Ice Age at this point. The cast is constantly growing and no one is ever let go, just simply squeezed to the side. Crash and Eddie barely get a line between them the poor guys. Ice Age is getting bloated by its overly large cast. So large that I probably won’t even touch on most of the characters.

  The thing is I thought Ice age 3 actually balanced the characters pretty well. For a number 3 film it did a surprisingly good job and brought to it probably my favourite character of the entire series with Buck. The jokes worked whilst still having a good heart. News of a baby turns the cold Manny in to an overly protective worrier and threatens to split the group as Diego feels it’s time to move on. But at the end they all make up and remember they’re all family.

  Number 4 is pretty lacking in this area, trading it in for a very simple “Manny wants to get home” story. Kids and young teens might appreciate the B-story of Peaches learning lessons about boys and friendship and all that, but in the end it’s pretty dull.

  There's also a very tired "animal meets female version of themselves and falls in love". They essentially give her Diego's arc from the first film except it's much less meaningful because it never really feels like she gets there on her own. You see this is the issue of having so many characters. A film loses focus and writing for individual characters just becomes tricky when they only have a few lines in the entire film.

  Then there are the plot holes. Oooh the plot holes. Let’s look at those shall we? Number one. Captain Gut spots the trio’s lump of ice and decides to attack, claiming that their “ship” will be his. Seriously? So you’re just going to pull along this random lump of ice? It would make more sense if they had some sort of treasure, or even if he wanted to eat them but he doesn’t even want to do that.

  Number two: Upon reaching the jumping on point for the current that will take them home, they spot Gut and his brand new ship. Their reaction? “We must steal this for ourselves!” Right. So you don’t think you could just, I don’t know, break off another piece of ice for yourselves?

  Number three: You’re a fucking mammoth! This was pretty much my reaction to most things in this film. There’s even a scene where Gut, a chimp, stops Manny in his tracks by holding his tusks. And this can’t even be blamed on cartoon logic. The first film made it very clear that as a mammoth, Manny was usually unbeatable. Yet here, a team including a mammoth and a sabre tooth tiger barely manages to make an impact.

  Ice Age 4 wasn’t all bad and clearly its “Looney Toons” style slapstick still entertains the kids. There were a few children sat at the very front and all of them were laughing their heads off. And you know what? So was I. Okay it wasn’t amazing, but it at least gets points for giving me a few chuckles.

  The final opinion? It was okay and if you have the task of taking a youngster to see a film you could do a lot worse. It lacks the heart of the first film and the entertainment value of the third. A few laughs here and there but ultimately it’s only there for your money.

Extra note: They also seem to forget that good music exists. Seriously, how did it go from this to this?