Film Review: Ice Age: Continental Drift

Ice Age: Continental Drift. Rated PG (Mild animated violence and coarse language). 92 minutes. Directed by Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier. Screenplay by Michael Berg and Jason Fuchs.

Verdict: The Ice Age gang are back in a virtuoso display of 3D action and adventure.

It’s hard to believe that it is ten years since the lovable characters in Ice Age (2002) burst onto the screen. The original’s mammoth success spawned two sequels – Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) – and now the gang are reunited in a virtuoso display of 3D action and adventure. The 3D format is so successful here in fact, that it makes the 3D version almost compulsory.

When Scrat the squirrel (Chris Wedge) decides to bury his beloved acorn in the ice, he inadvertently triggers a cataclysmic chain of events that reshapes the continents and separates Manny (Ray Romano) the mammoth from his partner Ellie (Queen Latifah) and their daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer). With the constant threat of environmental and ecological disaster inching ever closer, the characters must fight the elements (and some classic foes – including Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage’s marauding, swashbuckling pirate Captain Gutt) in their desperate race to be reunited.

Sid the sloth (pictured, voiced by the brilliant John Leguizamo) remains a masterpiece of character animation and voice work, while the debut of his Granny (Wanda Sykes), is nothing less than inspirational. Granny’s idiosyncratic zeal for life gives the film a much-needed thread of almost surreal absurdism – keeping it well away from The Lion King and Happy Feet 2 territory when it matters most.

What is obvious from the first frame of this fourth instalment in the Ice Age franchise, is the immense amount of skill and confidence behind the scenes – led by directors Martino (Horton Hears a Who!) and Thurmeier (Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs). The voice work – without exception – is spot on, while Renato Falcão’s (Rio) cinematography and James Palumbo (Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs) and David Salter (Finding Nemo, Toy Story 2) editing are all faultless.

Environmental issues have been a constant feature of the recent Hollywood studio output for their young audiences, and if Mr Berg and Fuchs’s occasionally brooding and intense screenplay plays it with a capital D for Disaster, it also manages to offer an important sense of hopeful optimism. Integral to the film’s entertainment value, too, are the messages about the critical importance of family, great friends and the rightful place that life-changing adventures have to play in our lives.