Ice Age: Collision Course

Dir: Mike Thurmeier

2016

*

In some respects I'm astonished that the Ice Age series has lasted this long, its decline in quality is clear and it was never that good in the first place. One might think that they must be doing something right, but I would argue that they're not, the fact of the matter is that Ice Age just got in there early. Many great animations have come out since, we're decent enough, but failed to make what was seen as enough profit to warrant a sequel. Ice Age arrived in 2002, before the huge influx of 3D animation and established itself due to lack choice. A couple of films in and it's a brand, kids will watch anything, parents don't care and cinemas only show kids films these days so Blue Sky Studios can't lose. Ice Age: Collision Course received negative reviews across the board, absolutely no one liked it and all agreed that it was the worst Ice Age film thus far but it still made something like a $300 million + profit and another film is on the way. It has become a licence to print money, without the need for great writing. Huge credit to the special effects people and the animators, what they do is amazing and each film in that aspect is an improvement on the last, it is just that their hard work is incredibly let down by the fact that the stories are always so painfully bad. I hate the melodrama that seems to feature so predominantly in kid's animated features. In this instance, Manny (the huge Woolly Mammoth voice by Ray Romano) has issues watching his daughter grow into a women, settle down and marry. He also has son-in-law issues. Why would kids be interested in that sort of story-line? The stereotype and clichés are now part and parcel of these types of kid’s film and I wonder how much damage it is having (assuming kids actually take any of this stuff in and aren't just still gawping at the screen). I would also suggest Neil deGrasse Tyson's cameo as concerning to kids’ education, given the ridiculous science fiction featured in the story and before you suggest I'm over thinking it, I still know adults who think there are boy cows with udders thanks to 80s cartoons. The film actually feels like three or four shorter stories pieced together, a combination of three or four of those terrible straight to DVD shorts that the animation studios often peddle around Christmas. I would guess that every voice actor probably has around fifty lines each maximum, which I'm sure kept costs low. It's still easy money though for everyone involved. The voice of Sid's new girlfriend seems to be different depending on territory, which seems to be something of a trend these days, although I don't quite understand the point. Francine the Sloth is voiced by Jessie J in the UK (a singer whose popularity was fleeting and kind of over) rather than the original version that had Melissa Rauch in the role. This is an example of the studio not knowing their audience. Jessie J doesn't have a voice you'd especially recognize and it certainly isn't desirable. Melissa Rauch's voice is immediately recognizable, and the producers should know that The Big Bang is popular around the world and we Brits know who she is. I usually like Ice Age purely for the Scrat sequences but these were also quite poor and badly conceived. Why they turned a little joke that featured in one of the past films and made a story out of it just proves that they've run out of ideas/passion or both. It's now (and has been for a while to be honest) all about the money.