Cinema Saturday [Ice Age: Continental Drift]

Ice Age: Continental Drift (#4)
20th Century Fox
December 11; 2012
88 minutes; PG
info at IMDb/buy on Amazon: 3D Combo Pack/Blu-ray/DVD/Instant Video
(with John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Ray Romano & Queen Latifah)

Ice Age: Continental Drift is the fourth movie in the Ice Age series/franchise, it follows 2002's Ice Age, 2006's Ice Age: The Meltdown and 2009's Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

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.

(Synopsis from IMDb)

The movie does pick up with the same group of characters that have been introduced and whose relationships have grown over the previous movies: Manny, Diego, Sid, Ellie and, of course, Scrat and his acorn. It also introduces a lot of new characters voiced by some great talents including Wanda Sykes, Heather Morris, Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj, and Aziz Ansari.

Though it's the fourth movie, you don't have to be caught up in the story line to know what's happening in Continental Drift it's a pretty standalone movie. If you do want to know what has happened in the previous movies, or just want a refresher, there's available on the special features. About ten minutes long, 'Ice Age: The Story So Far' is just that, the story so far and gives you a basic rundown of what's happened prior to Continental Drift.

The additions (if not influx) of new characters in this installment was great. The main characters already established in the series were separated for a lot of the film and the new characters were not only good for the story, they were interesting additions.

The pirates did remind me of a certain other, live action, human portrayed pirate movie . . . but I rather liked that. And any time you have animals (literal ones) as pirates and it's working? It's all good.

Ice Age: Continental Drift did lack some of the subtle, hidden humor, some of the jokes that are funny to adults only/more so that movies like Shrek, etc are doing so well. It was funny and it was fun, but not incredibly so and not really consistently so, either.

There was more adventure -- with Sid, Manny and Diego on the iceberg, trying to get home -- than humor, but something about it just didn't quite get there for me. It was definitely a good movie and, for sure, not a disappointment for the series and the characters, but not a great movie especially with all of the great animated and kids' movies releasing lately. (So, your opinion may be a bit different if you have a connection to the characters.)

(I do want to mention that while the beginning was more of a setup, I thought it was pretty creative and a great way to establish things, if a faulty history lesson for kids ;))



thank you to Fox & ThinkJam for my copy