Ice Age 4 Continental Drift (2012)
Country: US
Technical: col/2.35:1 94m
Director: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
Cast: Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo
Synopsis:
As the vast continent of Pangaea splits to form the separate continents, Manny the mammoth is separated from wife and teenage daughter, cast adrift on an iceberg in the company of his former 'surrogate' family. As those left behind retreat before an advancing continental shelf, Manny, Diego and Sid, together with the latter's equally abandoned Granny, must fight their way back against ocean currents and a belligerent simian pirate.
Review:
Some play with the ultimate in tectonic shifting had to come to the franchise sooner or later, even if it did have nothing to do with the ice ages and is geologically accelerated several hundred-fold. As the perils encountered by these characters are upped with each instalment, reaching literally stratospheric heights early on in this one, so is the tension between their status as mere cartoon characters like Wily Coyote and the concept of mortality present from the beginning with the deaths of the infant human's mother and Manny's own parents in Ice Age. Similarly, even as the standard of animation gets better and better (rendering of water and hairs usually being given as indicators of the above), so the inventiveness of the writing diminishes, and the inclusion of pirates and an Odyssey-derived siren sequence bespeaks a certain desperation. Here the theme is that Manny must relinquish a bit of parental protectiveness over his hormonal daughter, while the heterogeneous group reasserts itself as an inclusive and mutually supportive unit with the arrival of Granny and her eccentric ways. Good value family entertainment, all the same, with some gags thrown in for grown-ups, though the climax, in which they sail into a New York-like anchorage complete with Statue of Liberty-shaped rock formation, is one self-admiring flourish too many!
Country: US
Technical: col/2.35:1 94m
Director: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
Cast: Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo
Synopsis:
As the vast continent of Pangaea splits to form the separate continents, Manny the mammoth is separated from wife and teenage daughter, cast adrift on an iceberg in the company of his former 'surrogate' family. As those left behind retreat before an advancing continental shelf, Manny, Diego and Sid, together with the latter's equally abandoned Granny, must fight their way back against ocean currents and a belligerent simian pirate.
Review:
Some play with the ultimate in tectonic shifting had to come to the franchise sooner or later, even if it did have nothing to do with the ice ages and is geologically accelerated several hundred-fold. As the perils encountered by these characters are upped with each instalment, reaching literally stratospheric heights early on in this one, so is the tension between their status as mere cartoon characters like Wily Coyote and the concept of mortality present from the beginning with the deaths of the infant human's mother and Manny's own parents in Ice Age. Similarly, even as the standard of animation gets better and better (rendering of water and hairs usually being given as indicators of the above), so the inventiveness of the writing diminishes, and the inclusion of pirates and an Odyssey-derived siren sequence bespeaks a certain desperation. Here the theme is that Manny must relinquish a bit of parental protectiveness over his hormonal daughter, while the heterogeneous group reasserts itself as an inclusive and mutually supportive unit with the arrival of Granny and her eccentric ways. Good value family entertainment, all the same, with some gags thrown in for grown-ups, though the climax, in which they sail into a New York-like anchorage complete with Statue of Liberty-shaped rock formation, is one self-admiring flourish too many!
Country: US
Technical: col/2.35:1 94m
Director: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
Cast: Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo
Synopsis:
As the vast continent of Pangaea splits to form the separate continents, Manny the mammoth is separated from wife and teenage daughter, cast adrift on an iceberg in the company of his former 'surrogate' family. As those left behind retreat before an advancing continental shelf, Manny, Diego and Sid, together with the latter's equally abandoned Granny, must fight their way back against ocean currents and a belligerent simian pirate.
Review:
Some play with the ultimate in tectonic shifting had to come to the franchise sooner or later, even if it did have nothing to do with the ice ages and is geologically accelerated several hundred-fold. As the perils encountered by these characters are upped with each instalment, reaching literally stratospheric heights early on in this one, so is the tension between their status as mere cartoon characters like Wily Coyote and the concept of mortality present from the beginning with the deaths of the infant human's mother and Manny's own parents in Ice Age. Similarly, even as the standard of animation gets better and better (rendering of water and hairs usually being given as indicators of the above), so the inventiveness of the writing diminishes, and the inclusion of pirates and an Odyssey-derived siren sequence bespeaks a certain desperation. Here the theme is that Manny must relinquish a bit of parental protectiveness over his hormonal daughter, while the heterogeneous group reasserts itself as an inclusive and mutually supportive unit with the arrival of Granny and her eccentric ways. Good value family entertainment, all the same, with some gags thrown in for grown-ups, though the climax, in which they sail into a New York-like anchorage complete with Statue of Liberty-shaped rock formation, is one self-admiring flourish too many!