Okay, so your world is falling apart, your dad won’t let you live your life and hates your boyfriend. You’ll identify with teen Peaches. Yeah, so she’s a giant, ancient wooly- mammoth-elephant-like critter but families seem to have the same problems no matter what species.
Scrat is Where It’s At
If your geology class didn’t teach you about continental drift (the break-up in ancient days of giant continents into the land masses we know today), then here’s the cartoon version: Little Scrat is still chasing his beloved acorn. When it goes down a lava tube to the center of the Earth, he follows and, in a chase, manages to rotate the Earth’s core so fast that land masses start to break up on the surface! Whoops.
Family Drama
Back home, Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano) wants to keep teen daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) away from the wrong crowd (voices include Drake and Nicki Minaj) by not letting her go anywhere. Helping her sneak away is mole pal Louis (Josh Gad) who is secretly crushin’ on her. Syd the sloth (John Leguizamo) gets saddled with his feisty Granny (Wanda Sykes) when the family dumps her on him.
The Big Crack Up
When the continents start moving and cracking up, the gang is separated. Peaches and her loving mom Ellie (Queen Latifah) are left behind with the possum brothers and others while Manny, tiger Diego (Denis Leary) and Syd and Granny are stuck on an iceberg way out at sea. Manny vows to return to his family no matter what.
Pirates Attack
Also on a ship-like iceberg are Gut, a nasty Ape captain and his crew, among them, a rabbit, a huge elephant seal and a hot white tigress (Jennifer Lopez) which whom Diego falls in love. The battle to get home includes a huge whale, scary, critter-eating sea sirens and a whole “Braveheart-style” army of prehistoric chipmunks!
Wrapping Up
This new “Ice Age” tale has more action, more characters, a musical number, romance (for Diego) and looks great in 3-D. The continental destruction is pretty amazing. You get a story on two fronts; Manny and the iceberg castaways then Peaches and Ellie back home struggling to get to a meet-up point for a reunion with the Manny gang. There are tons of new characters which may be a little too much thrown atcha in one movie.
Loveable Scrat has a whole storyline of his own throughout the movie and I love him most, but it adds more to the visual and storyheavy load. Maybe cut back on the other story arenas and have more Scrat!
The whole movie-going experience starts out with a very charming, funny and sweet “Simpsons” cartoon featuring Maggie the baby versus a daycare bully. Maggie wins of course. Cool
Despite the overblown story, this new Ice Age movie moves along quickly and keeps its family/relationship charm along with the added action so we go 4 stars.
Movie trailer:
