Ice Age: Continental Drift:
**/*****, or 4/10
Say what
you will about the writers of the Ice Age films, in hindsight
they're not afraid to admit the faults in their previous work. When
Sid the sloth is visited by his family in the latest addition to the
series, Ice Age: Continental Drift, he states 'we had an
adventure with dinosaurs, it made no sense but it sure was exciting!'
and he hits the nail on the head. That description fits the
predecessor Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs perfectly, since it
did feel rather nonsensical to have Ice Age mammals meet dinosaurs,
but it did result in a decent amount of fun (though as a dinosaur
fan, I could be biased in this opinion). Sadly, throwing yet another
random element in the mix in the fourth entry into the franchise,
pirates in this case, unfortunately backfires completely, leading to
a rather dull series of events loaded with dirty jokes and preachy
life lessons we would have preferred to do without.
Ice
Age: Continental Drift picks up some time after the occurrences
in Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
Warning! Spoilers! Mammoth couple Manny
(still voiced by Ray Romano) and Ellie (still voiced by Queen
Latifah) are in the process of raising their daughter Peaches (Keke
Palmer), who's hit puberty and proves to be quite feisty and
headstrong. Like human teenage girls she's constantly irritated by
her father's overprotection, and just wants to have fun with kids her
own age, but needs to be accepted by them first. Her friendship with
the cowardly but cute mole hog Louis (Josh Gad) makes that kinda
hard, since everybody thinks little of him, but to nobody's surprise
she'll eventually find he was always her best and most loyal friend
to begin with, while the other teen mammoths are just a bunch of
intolerant jerks. All very recognizable for teenagers, who
undoubtedly will consider this film a Louis itself, since it's
clearly aimed at a younger audience that still enjoys gags revolving
around natural body wastes. Such an audience at least will not stop
to think about the grotesquerie of a mole hog falling in love with a
mammoth (interspecies romance? Eeewww!!).
Meanwhile,
Sid (still voiced by John Leguizamo) gets a surprise visit from his
family, a disgusting batch of smelly, unsympathetic characters that
fortunately exit the film as suddenly as they entered it, but sadly
leave Sid's grandmother (Wanda Sykes) behind, an extremely old and
weathered sloth which soon becomes the target of every conceivable
geriatric cliché, like Peaches provides the sterotypical teenager
routine for this herd of prehistoric animals that have banded
together over the last three movies to form an overly extended
family, which in itself has become a narrative problem: there's now
so many characters the movie can hardly accomodate them all into the
plot (it's only running 94 minutes), which leads to many returning
characters' involvement being reduced to bit parts, a few lines here
and there. Fortunately the writers realized which characters remain
the most important, namely the original trio of Manny, Sid and sabre
tooth tiger Diego (still voiced by Denis Leary). And so the plot of
the movie takes care of separating these three bosom friends from
their family, tasking them with finding a way back to their loved
ones to make sure the movie ends on a happy note. Unfortunately
Granny tags along with them to make sure the writers' stream of lame
smelly jokes flows uninterrupted.
The key
to getting the story in motion is, as always, Scrat. Still the most
beloved character of the franchise, his never ending quest for his
nut and the usual catastrophes this leads to kickstart the
continental drift of the title, splitting both the plot lines and the
herd in two (our heroes and Granny on the one hand and the rest of
the herd on the other) and once again keeping Scrat from attaining
his seemingly simple goal, which continues the tradition of funny
intermezzos this franchise has firmly established from day one, in
which the squirrel continues his hunt for his nut, all the while
enlarging everybody's problems because of his natural tendency
towards causing major calamities in the process. His other talent,
getting the best jokes, is also reaffirmed, as Scrat's appearances
interrupting the main plot make for a sporadic hilarious moment in a
movie otherwise filled with cringe worthy situations resembling
attempts at humour, plus dreary moral lessons. The moment of calm the
movie delivers when the protagonists are cut off from their family
proves all too brief, as we witness one overload of characters being
substituted by another in the shape of the pirate crew that forms the
movie's main antagonist (not counting that darn nut). The notion of
adding pirates to the franchise seems an attempt to capitalize on
Disney's major successes with Pirates of the Caribbean, just a
few years too late to successfully jump on that particular bandwagon.
The
merry band of pirates are just as diverse a bunch of characters as
the ones Manny, Sid and Diego just left behind, they're just a little
less friendly. The ship shaped iceberg they set sail on the seven
seas with is run by a giant gorilla named Captain Gutt (pleasantly
voiced by Tyrion Lannister Peter Dinklage, who balances well between
insincere politeness and ruthless villainy) running a tight ship over
his scruffy looking band of buccaneers, which includes an obnoxious
killer rabbit, a thick headed elephant seal (Nick Frost) and a
sultry, seductive female saber called Shira (voiced by Jennifer
Lopez), who is introduced to (romantically) spice up Diego's
character a bit: not a bad idea considering the poor pussycat has had
no interaction with his own kind since the first film of the series,
and has since felt more and more like a redundancy character wise,
with little development or purpose other than saving his friends from
imminent danger every once in a while. Shira herself is a typical
tough girl with a rough past, who would like a change in her life
style but is afraid of being hurt again. Of course it will surprise
nobody when she switches sides and turns against her captain, much to
his chagrin. Captain Gutt is a fairly straightforward bad guy,
uncompromisingly dominating his underlings, ruling by fear instead of
respect: in this regard he's the polar opposite of Manny, the gentle
giant running his herd with love and integrity instead. Of course
both characters soon find themselves physically at odds, with Manny
winning the first round, making Gutt swear vengeance against him and
– oh woe! – his family. Unfortunately Gutt's reason for being a
short tempered vicious villain remains unexplored, making him a
largely one-dimensional character, except in his few interactions
with Shira, sort of his surrogate daughter (more by abduction than
adoption).
Escaping
the clutches of Gutt the first time, our heroes (and Granny) continue
their journey home, which leads to the occasional nod to Homer's
Oddyssey, including a confrontation with Sirens, monstrous
creatures with hypnotic powers out to lure animals to their death.
Though adding references to classic literature (Coleridge's Rime
of the Ancient Mariner is also hailed at least once) to the
already chaotic mix at least results in a suspenseful scene like
this, it's not enough to keep the movie from becoming tiresome and
continuing to feel like a string of random events, except for the
scenes centering on Scrat. Unfortunately some of his scenes have
already been used in the movie's trailer campaigns, so these will
feel overly familiar. In fact, it might be a better idea altogether
from here on out to ditch the rest of the Ice Age gang
entirely and keep producing theatrical shorts of Scrat chasing his
nutty dream attached to other family movies, as used to be the
tradition with the classic Looney Tunes sketches this squirrel's
shenanigans were obviously inspired by. Scrat's adventures as a
castaway on a tiny island, his own Siren encounter and him causing
the downfall of Scratlantis (featuring a delightful little voice role
for Patrick Stewart as 'Ariscratle') prove insufficient to carry the
whole film, but could easily carry themselves on separate occasions.
No doubt, this would clash with the studio's financial interests,
even though it would waste much less of everybody's time.
Though
the quality of both the story and the gags has deteriorated
progressively since the first Ice Age film, the same cannot be
said for the animation. Whereas it could be called more than
primitive in 2002, in this day and age it looks absolutely marvelous,
courtesy of a vast army of nameless pixel pushing desk slaves no
doubt. It almost feels cruel to realize such an amount of work
amounted to such a disappointing final product, as if the animation
talents had better put their efforts to use elsewhere. However,
Continental Drift does not beat Dawn of the Dinosaurs
on the visual front, since it's largely a return to the well known
territory of the first two films as far as character and landscape
style is concerned. While Dawn of the Dinosaurs opened up a
whole new array of possibilities provided by the lush underground
jungle realm populated by reptilian/avian creatures, Continental
Drift returns to the icy vistas inhabited by furry mammals, its
only addition numerous wide seascapes of water, water everywhere.
Though adding dinosaurs to the franchise seemed silly from a
narrative perspective (it was, really), it succeeded wonderfully in
adding grandiose new environments and creatures to the whole, making
it the most original movie of the bunch from a visual point of view.
In every regard, be it in terms of story, humour or characters, the
top of the franchise has clearly been reached before, and Continental
Drift as such only goes over it, speeding downhill, snowballing
its plot and gags to lower depths as it nears the end of 94 minutes
of excrement jokes, pirate lunacy and worn out, tiresome family
values involving sticking by your faithful friends and trusting in
fatherly love.
Even
though it's clear by now the writers are out of original ideas, the
current box office results for Ice Age: Continental Drift will
undoubtedly pave the way for a fifth addition to the franchise. This
time, with aliens. Why? No reason. It makes no sense, but it might
sure prove to be exciting! Or maybe the writers will admit to
themselves there's little more to add to this Ice Age and finally
melt it down for good. Ice Age: Extinction... sounds good,
after this letdown of mammoth proportions!
And
watch the trailer here:
