Acorn-loving rodent Scrat inadvertently puts a comet on a collision course with Earth (don't ask!), following which our mismatched mammals have a world to save. And, all the while, dad Manny is having to deal with daughter Peaches' plans to go travelling with idiot boyfriend Julian. Assuming mammoths have boyfriends, of course.
The fifth entry in the Ice Age saga once again finds a potentially earth-shattering disaster sharing centre stage with the soapy shenanigans of the main cast (as well as Peaches and Julian causing Manny heartache, Sid the Sloth actually has sufficient love-life for it to be causing him problems).
The impending cometary collision is caused by Scrat pursuing acorns onto a flying saucer, frozen in ice, and then inadvertently piloting it into orbital disaster (fortunately, all the planetary bodies in the solar system are within about a hundred yards of each other, but it's a bit foolish of me to sarcastically make this point about a film featuring a cast of friendly talking mammoths, sloths, and sabre-tooth tigers). Scrat's stuff is, as always, comical knockabout humour and, for me, it was the best part of the film.
The disaster plot fell a bit flat, as did Manny's concerns - these elements felt like little more than revisiting the difficulties in Continental Drift, and set me to wondering if these characters have now reached the end of their shelf life. They are pleasant enough company, but do they need to break new ground and, if so, how?
Something else which seemed problematic to me was the CGI. The original character designs, of necessity, were blocky and relatively low on detail (CGI has moved on a lot in 14 years), and I've got used to CGI movies looking a great deal slicker than Ice Age 5 - which needs to share an aesthetic with its predecessors - does. Oh, it has moved on, but it has a tricky line to tread.
The voice cast does fine, as always, and I suspect that this will sit happily in a 5-movie set but, to me, it felt as if this series has reached the end of the road.
The fifth entry in the Ice Age saga once again finds a potentially earth-shattering disaster sharing centre stage with the soapy shenanigans of the main cast (as well as Peaches and Julian causing Manny heartache, Sid the Sloth actually has sufficient love-life for it to be causing him problems).
The impending cometary collision is caused by Scrat pursuing acorns onto a flying saucer, frozen in ice, and then inadvertently piloting it into orbital disaster (fortunately, all the planetary bodies in the solar system are within about a hundred yards of each other, but it's a bit foolish of me to sarcastically make this point about a film featuring a cast of friendly talking mammoths, sloths, and sabre-tooth tigers). Scrat's stuff is, as always, comical knockabout humour and, for me, it was the best part of the film.
The disaster plot fell a bit flat, as did Manny's concerns - these elements felt like little more than revisiting the difficulties in Continental Drift, and set me to wondering if these characters have now reached the end of their shelf life. They are pleasant enough company, but do they need to break new ground and, if so, how?
Something else which seemed problematic to me was the CGI. The original character designs, of necessity, were blocky and relatively low on detail (CGI has moved on a lot in 14 years), and I've got used to CGI movies looking a great deal slicker than Ice Age 5 - which needs to share an aesthetic with its predecessors - does. Oh, it has moved on, but it has a tricky line to tread.
The voice cast does fine, as always, and I suspect that this will sit happily in a 5-movie set but, to me, it felt as if this series has reached the end of the road.