Ice Age: Continental Drift

At the very least, you can say that the Ice Age movies are pretty much a textbook example of a movie franchise that plays it safe. After ten years and four movies, the filmmakers haven't seen much of a need to change its kid-pleasing formula. This means that Continental Drift is just as harmless, inoffensive, and brightly colored as the previous movies. It also means that just like the last few movies, there's not a whole lot to grab the attention of accompanying adults, other than the occasional clever line.

Just like before, the movie focuses on an unusual "herd" of prehistoric animals, which include Manny the mammoth (voice by Ray Romano), Diego the saber-tooth tiger (Denis Leary), Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo), and Manny's wife, Ellie (Queen Latifah), a mammoth who was raised by possums, and who still sleeps by hanging upside down from a tree branch by her tail. (And yes, the sight of a mammoth hanging upside down from a tree still makes me laugh.) This time, there are two new main cast members - Manny and Ellie's teenage daughter, Peaches (Keke Palmer), and Sid's somewhat senile Granny (Wanda Sykes). Peaches exists, so there can be a youth-oriented subplot about not leaving your real friends behind due to peer pressure. And Granny is here to deliver the film's best lines in Sykes' trademark sarcastic comic style. She's the best thing to happen to this franchise in a while, and I wouldn't mind seeing a cartoon short based around her.

In the film's opening sequence, the pathetic little prehistoric squirrel called Scrat (who has become somewhat of a mascot for the franchise, and whose jokes owe a great deal of debt to Chuck Jones' Road Runner shorts) causes the land mass that makes up the Earth to break up into continents during one of his ill-fated missions to grab an elusive acorn. As the land shifts and breaks apart, Manny is separated from his family by a massive fissure in the ground, and ends up drifting off to sea on a large chunk of land, along with Diego, Sid, and Granny. As the animals travel the open seas to reunite with Manny's family, they encounter a band of animal pirates, led by the evil monkey pirate Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage). The Captain has a large crew of followers, but the only one that matters is a female saber-tooth tiger named Shira (Jennifer Lopez), who falls for Diego, and ends up switching sides before the movie is over.

If you want to know how little Continental Drift is concerned with character, look no further than the relationship between Diego and Shira. I don't seem to recall the movie giving a reason as to why these two end up together, other than the fact that they're both the same animal, and of the opposite gender. The movie is also very sketchy on the details as to why Shira betrays the pirate crew to begin with, other than a tacked on message on how "family is everything". But then, this is the sort of movie where things just happen. It's not really interested in building its characters, or creating a compelling world for these them to inhabit. It's all about the fast-paced gags, which is sure to entertain the 10-and-under crowd, while the adults will find the whole thing tolerable, but not very exciting.

That's not to say there aren't any funny lines (many of which are provided by Sykes), or sweet individual moments. I thought the plot concerning a mole-hog (a cross between a mole and a hedgehog) named Louis was kind of cute. He's voiced by Josh Gad (from Broadway's Book of Mormon), and serves as a shy love interest for Peaches the mammoth. Just the idea of a mole and a mammoth getting together got my mind swimming in ideas that probably don't belong in a kids' movie. Regardless, the character and the plot are kind of cute, even if they both end up getting shortchanged by the movie's constant manic action with pirates and prehistoric fish creatures that can shape-shift somehow. Something tells me that if the movie would just slow down from time to time, I probably would have liked it more.

One final note: Before Ice Age: Continental Drift, there is a five minute Simpsons short titled The Longest Daycare. It's centered on Simpson baby, Maggie, after she is dropped off at the Ayn Rand School for Tots. What follows is a series of clever visual gags (there is no actual dialogue in the film) as Maggie tries to save a stray butterfly from a particularly violent baby who enjoys torturing insects. The film is witty, amusing, and will probably entertain adults more than the main feature that follows. Kids will like it, but will probably like the talking animals more.

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