"Ice Age: Collision Course" Review

Title: Ice Age: Collision Course

Directed by: Mike Thurmeier and Yoni Brenner

Written by: Michael J. Wilson, Michael Berg, and Yoni Brenner

Year: 2016


How did Ice Age become a franchise? Honestly, it astounds me that these films are still being made. I watched the first one countless times when I was younger, so it is quite special to me. But the sequels have seemingly gotten progressively worse. Can this fifth installment set the series on a better course, or does this sequel fail to leave an impact?

Scrat encounters an alien spacecraft, which he accidentally turns on, torpedoing himself into space. After a number of mishaps, he inadvertently sets a colossal asteroid on a collision course towards earth. Now, the herd must find a way to divert the asteroid and avoid extinction.

Ray Romano is one of my favorite comedians. His soft-spoken demeanor and pessimistic humor is excellent, which is what makes Manny a funny character. But Romano deserves to be in a better film. A lot of the dialogue he is given feels completely out of place for the character. John Leguizamo is fine once again as Sid. If you are a fan of the character's stupidity and foolish antics, I do not believe you will be disappointed in him. Dennis Leary is very underused as Diego. His lines could have been given to any other character and this would not have changed anything. All of his dialogue consists of variations of "we have to get out of here" and similar phrases.

Simon Pegg is wonderful as Buck. He exudes an enormous amount of energy, bouncing between many different voices and delivering rapid-fire lines. Queen Latifah, Jennifer Lopez, and Keke Palmer all fail to leave impressions. They are not given much to work with and all play off the same note of sassiness, which gets old quickly. Wanda Sykes is overplayed as Sid's Granny. It is obvious that the filmmakers intended her to be one of the funnier characters; but the style of humor incorporated with her does not mesh well with the setting. It feels as if this character came from a different movie.

Ice Age: Collision Course excels at irritating the audience with obnoxious characters. Julian, Crash, Eddie, the dino-bird trio, and the unholy Shangri Llama are all awful characters. Julian, voiced by Adam Devine, is far too modern for this story. He speaks with contemporary skater jargon, using "dude" at every opportunity. Crash and Eddie have not gotten any better since their debut. They remain too stupid to function as comedic characters, and their gross-out humor is anything but funny. The dino-birds make for incredibly weak and unnecessary villains. They are the definition of tacked-on. And do not get me started on the Shangri Llama. In addition to a vexing voice performance from Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the Shangri Llama is simply a terrible and insufferable character.

The story is a jumbled mess. The main plot-line of a giant meteor heading towards Earth would have been enough. If the film were kept this simple, it would have allowed for more natural character interactions and a more streamlined story. Instead, numerous sub-plots are cobbled together and thrown into the mix, producing a horribly unbalanced blend.

The main sub-plot concerns Manny and Ellie dealing with the fact that their daughter is getting married and moving away. That seems like a fine character conflict. However, on top of that, Manny needs to warm up to Julian in several sequences, making this quite a meaty story line. The next sub-plot involves Sid trying to find a mate. This is addressed only in the first and third acts, with Sid being rejected in the former and in love in the latter. So this film now has two functional sub-plots; but that is not enough, apparently.

Diego and Shira are given a plot-line that is brought up a grand total of two times. Near the beginning, they realize that children are afraid of them, which upsets them. However, this is never spoken of again until the final five minutes. In addition to having neutral dialogue, Diego and Shira have a very weak story. The only reason they are in this picture is so that no one questions where they went. They offer nothing to the plot and do nothing substantial.

Buck was not left out of the loop, however, as he also has his own plot point. While he is guiding the mammals to the crash site, he is also trying to avoid the family of dino-birds he ticked-off at the beginning of the film. As a result, the family becomes an unnecessary villain. The impending asteroid is enough, and this additional threat is paper-thin and serves no purpose. Not only that, but there is even a moral dilemma within the family. Roger, the weak and scrawny one, does not agree with his family's ideas and is constantly in disagreement with them. This is yet another sub-plot that receives a lazy resolution and did not need to exist in the first place.

But wait, there is more. While all of this is occurring on Earth, Scrat is having his own adventure in space. Everything he does impacts what happens on the planet below. What does not work about these sequences is how they are cut into the film. The editing is very choppy and disjointed. Although these scenes move the plot forward and directly relate to the story, they do not serve the flow of the film. However, the scenes with Scrat are absolutley hysterical. These scenes are very reminiscent of the classic Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The slapstick is lightning quick and the jokes are cleverly done, making for one of the only high points in Ice Age: Collision Course.

Something very odd about this movie is just how scientific it is. There are references to friction, magnetism, the solar system, an alien spacecraft, a robot, and even a vocal performance by Neil Degrasse Tyson. Furthermore, I would venture to say that you could categorize this film as science fiction. With an alien spacecraft to boot, there is also a heavy use of a prophecy and the characteristics of the asteroid crystals are magical. This is such a strange route for the film to take, and it does not work. The scientific references are not good for teaching children, as the laws of physics are thrown out the window, and the fantasy aspects feel extremely out of place.

I already mentioned how the jokes revolving around Scrat work very well. But how does the rest of the humor fare? Aside from a few good one-liners here and there, there is not that much to laugh at. A good portion of the jokes feel far too modern, such as Crash and Eddie's hashtag cheer, or anything that comes out of Julian's mouth. Manny's deadpan lines are great, Sid gets a couple good jokes, and Buck's insanity is entertaining. But beyond that, this movie has little comedic value.

The animation is very good, and has improved with each entry in the series. The character models are where Blue Sky's visuals really shine. The fur on the mammals is intensely detailed and the environments fit the tone of the film, even if they look rather flat. But the animation falters with the dino-birds. The feathers on these creatures look phenomenal, with each little portrusion noticeable. The scales, on the other hand, are horribly washed-out. Most of the scales look faded and belong in an N64 game. In short, the animation is above passable, if only because the character models are so well-defined.

Ice Age: Collision Course fails to offer anything to make it worth watching. The voice cast is mediocre at best (mainly due to the script); most of the characters are unfathomably infuriating; the plot is a colossal mess, with more sub-plots than it can handle; and, perhaps worst of all, it is not entertaining. The modern and scientific choices do not pay off and the plot progression is awful. There is an attempt at teaching a good moral, but the attempt is half-assed and fails to be resonate. Scrat is really the only saving grace of this film, in addition to a few minor positives, but that is not enough to recommend this movie.

Grade: D+