Ice Age: Collision Course

Ice Age: Collision Course continues with the adventures of Manny(Ray Romano), Diego(Denis Leary) & Sid(John Leguizamo). When Earth is about to be bombarded by a meteor shower, it is up to Manny, Diego, Sid & the rest of the herd, to save themselves & prevent the end of the world. They take the help of their old friend, Buck(Simon Pegg).

Ice Age: Collision Course is a fun film. Kids will love it. However, adults will only find it mildly entertaining. Personally, I feel that the Ice Age franchise should have ended with the fourth movie. Ice Age(2002), Ice Age: The Meltdown(2006), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs(2009) & Ice Age: Continental Drift(2012) are all great movies. Ice Age: Continental Drift(2012) has a perfect ending & there was absolutely no need to make further sequels. Blue Sky Studios decided to make one more Ice Age movie. This film is not boring at all. However, I am a fan of the Ice Age movies and, I am slightly disappointed with this film. There is not as much humor in this movie, as there is in previous installments. There are funny scenes but, there are not as many of them, as I would have liked. There are a slew of new characters. Some of them are welcome additions but, some of them are not. Due to the fact that there are too many characters, some of our favorite characters get sidelined. These are the movie's flaws. The animation is great. The 3D is impressive. The voice acting is amazing. Ray Romano is awesome as Manny. John Leguizamo is outstanding as Sid. Denis Leary is brilliant as Diego. Simon Pegg is spectacular as Buck. Queen Latifah is good as Ellie. Keke Palmer is superb as Peaches. Adam Devine is endearing as Julian. Wanda Sykes is hilarious as Granny. Seann William Scott & Josh Peck are funny as Crash & Eddie, respectively. Nick Offerman, Max Greenfield & Stephanie Beatriz are adequate as Gavin, Roger & Gertie, respectively. Jennifer Lopez is effective as Shira. Jesse Tyler Ferguson & Jessie J are impressive as Shangri Llama & Brooke, respectively. Chris Wedge is hysterical as Scrat. Ice Age: Collision Course is worth a watch. However, watch it with low expectations.

You gotta know when to stop. This franchise has run a couple of movies too long.

Now concentrating on this movie only, not the franchise, plainly put, it is a bad movie. If you are a die hard fan and want to pick positives and try desperately enough, you can do so. I am not that desperate and I take my movie watching pretty seriously and there is nothing good I can say about this movie. There is no point in going into the plot and dissecting it. Scrat used to be funny, but that seems to be a lifetime back. Sid used to be lovable, but I can't even remember the last time I felt so. There is no life in this cow, let alone milk.

OK, ice age 1 was hilarious and a new standard for animation humor; together with Shrek, that came a year earlier. But where Shrek kept pretty consistent through the sequels (the attack of the princesses in part 3 was a absolute high in animation comedy), Ice Age dropped away further each sequel. Shrek stopped in time, Ice age should have stopped after 3. Continental drift was already hardly worth watching.

This latest sequel is maybe one of the worst animation movies ever. The story-line is horrible and it is simply not funny. The writers are clearly struggling to make up a story the use all clichés they can find. Even Scrat is not funny most of the time, although he lifts the rest of the movie up.

Will kids like this movie? Probably, but it lacks the wonder and quality of the first Ice Age. An Ice Age fan better avoids this movie

The concluding episode, in which Scrat's escalating comic buffoonery is taken to its insane/extreme conclusion, as he ends up destroying life on Mars! Is that supposed to be funny? Anyway, anachronistic isn't enough to describe the lack of grounding (or icing) in reality: there is confusion between multiple eras, but at least we can enjoy some laughs with the old gang. The end of the series is signaled by Manny's daughter marrying and moving away: perhaps an allegory for children who grew up over the more-than-a-decade in which the Ice Age series was produced.

Sienna's Rating: 6 Stars Paul's Rating: 5 Stars Seb's Rating: 6 Stars.

Ice Age: Collision Course is a good film with excellent animation, laugh-out-loud comedy and includes all your fun and favorite characters from the past movies. The film follows Manny (Ray Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo), Diego (Denis Leary) and the rest of the Ice Age gang as they must divert an asteroid from flinging them into a new age called extinction.

My favorite character in Ice Age: Collision Course is Scrat (Chris Wedge) who started out as a small character in the first Ice Age film and slowly became a fan favorite and the mascot of the franchise. Scrat lights up the screen every scene he is in. His brand of slapstick humor is more present here than in any other Ice Age film. I even kind of sympathize with this character because he goes through all this trouble just for an acorn.

Another character I like is Buck. Simon Pegg's talent really shines in his voice over work here. Buck has a big personality and, just like Scrat, has some of the movie's most memorable laughs. He is in a lot of my favorite sequences. My favorite part of this film is when Buck tries to find a strategy to save the mammals from disaster. He seeks help from personalities in his mind including Neil deBuck Weasel. I'm a big fan of a television show Neil deGrasse Tyson did called Cosmos, so it was funny to see his foray into voice acting.

This movie is a pleasant surprise considering this is the fifth film in the franchise. I thought by now the series had run dry, but this one excels on several fronts in terms of how it looks and how much it will make you laugh. I recommend you see this in 3D. It was cool seeing asteroids barreling towards me. The effects are very polished. The computer animation in this film excels and mixes lush backgrounds with great character design. The film has good comedy, most of the time. There are one or two scenes in this film that take the joke one step too far or where it is just plain gross.

I give Ice Age: Collision Course an age rating of 5 to 18 because of some crude humor and sequences that could be scary to younger viewers. I give Ice Age: Collision Course 3 out of 5 stars.