Ice Age: Continental Drift arrived in 2012 as the fourth film in a series that had already survived three trips to the box office. Directed by Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier from a script by Michael Berg and Jason Fuchs, it runs 88 minutes. The marketing sold it with a tagline: “The end of the world is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Trailer, via officialiceage.
The Continental Break-Up That Starts Everything
The premise is a good one. Scrat, the series’ wordless sabre-toothed squirrel, causes a continental break-up that separates Manny from Ellie, Peaches, Crash and Eddie. Manny is left adrift on a moving chunk of ice with Sid, Granny and Diego.
That is a clean engine for a family adventure, and the film uses the setup to push its characters into open water.
Captain Gutt and His Floating Iceberg
The pirates are the film’s best idea and its biggest waste. Peter Dinklage voices Captain Gutt, a Gigantopithecus who sails a floating iceberg and tries to press Manny’s group into his crew. When they refuse, he tries to execute them.
The escape inadvertently causes Gutt’s ship to sink. His first mate, a female sabretooth named Shira, voiced by Jennifer Lopez, is left for dead and reluctantly joins the herd after they rescue her.
“The end of the world is just the tip of the iceberg.”
That tagline is the film’s whole pitch, and it is not enough to carry 88 minutes.
A Cast That Deserves Better
Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Queen Latifah all return, and the film adds Lopez, Drake and Nicki Minaj. Wanda Sykes voices Granny, Seann William Scott and Josh Peck return as Crash and Eddie, and Keke Palmer plays the teenage Peaches.
The voice work is not the problem. The script gives most of these performers a single note and asks them to hold it. Manny is overprotective. Ellie is supportive. Sid is Sid.
Switchback Cove and the Hyrax Plan
The third act moves to Switchback Cove, where Manny finds Gutt has enslaved a group of hyrax to build a new ship. Manny coordinates a plan with some more hyraxes to free their comrades and steal the ship.
It is a heist sequence bolted onto a road movie, and it plays like one. The film is 88 minutes long and still feels like it is stalling.
Mixed Reviews, Real Money
Ice Age: Continental Drift premiered at CineEurope on June 20, 2012, and opened in the United States on July 13. It grossed $877 million worldwide, the highest-grossing animated film of 2012 and the fifth highest-grossing film of the year.
Reviews were mixed, with praise for the animation and comedy and complaints about the story and character development. A sequel, Ice Age: Collision Course, followed on July 22, 2016.
What the Fourth Ice Age Gets Wrong
The money and the reviews tell different stories, and in this paper’s view the reviews have the better case. A film can be a hit and still be a step down, and this one is. The animation holds up. The comedy lands often enough. But the story is thin and the characters never grow.
The franchise had already gone to the dinosaurs. Continental Drift goes to the ocean, and it does not find anything new there. It finds pirates and a heist, all executed with competence and no urgency.
For a series built on a herd that keeps finding each other, this one feels like it is going through the motions. It is the fourth film, and it plays like it.
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