Ice Age: Collision Course arrived in theaters on July 22, 2016, the fifth film in a series that had already survived a continental break-up, a dinosaur lost world and a pirate monkey. This time the herd has to stop an asteroid. The asteroid is Scrat’s fault. Everything is Scrat’s fault, and that is the one law of this franchise that has never bent.
Trailer, via 20th Century Studios UK.
Scrat Chases an Acorn Into Orbit
The premise is simple enough. Scrat chases his acorn into an abandoned spaceship, gets catapulted off Earth, and accidentally sends a giant asteroid toward the planet. Manny, Sid, Diego and the rest of the herd leave home to find a way to fend it off.
Michael Thurmeier directs. Wikipedia credits the screenplay to Michael Wilson, Michael Berg and Yoni Brenner; the film’s own billing also lists Aubrey Solomon. The film runs 95 minutes and carries a tagline that promises a bang: “They’re going out with a bang.”
It does not deliver one.
Peaches Gets Engaged to Julian
The domestic plot is where the movie spends its first act, and it is a mess of competing threads.
Peaches, voiced by Keke Palmer, gets engaged to a mammoth named Julian, voiced by Adam Devine. Manny, voiced by Ray Romano, disapproves. He finds Julian annoying and incapable of protecting her. The concern grows when Peaches says she wants to travel and explore the world on her honeymoon, which Manny and Ellie both oppose.
Diego and Shira want children but worry the other kids will be scared of their species. Sid, voiced by John Leguizamo, is about to propose to his girlfriend Francine, gets dumped instead, and laments his solitude.
Then, during Manny and Ellie’s wedding anniversary, the asteroids hit and the herd barely reaches a cave.
That is a lot of plot for a film that also has to stop a rock from ending the world.
Buck Brings Back a Stone Pillar
Buck, voiced by Simon Pegg, is the best thing this series ever added, and Collision Course knows it. He gets three credits in the cast list: Buck, Pythagorus Buck and Robo Buck. That tells you what kind of movie this is.
In the underground lost world, Buck meets a trio of flying dromaeosaurs, finds an ancient stone pillar and takes it to the surface. He reunites with the herd and explains what the pillar says: asteroids have caused two extinctions already, and the next one is coming.
The engravings show the asteroids always fall in the same location. So the herd heads for a nearby volcano, the site of the previous impact, hoping to find a clue there.
The dromaeosaurs overhear. They decide to stop the herd.
Their reasoning is the film’s one genuinely interesting idea. They can fly, so they believe they can survive the impact. Letting the asteroid hit would mean revenge on Buck, the erasure of Earth’s population, and domination of the planet for themselves. Their son Roger, voiced by Max Greenfield, is reluctant but gets strong-armed into helping.
An Electromagnetic Plan and a Volcano
On the journey, Buck discovers asteroids have electromagnetic properties. His theory: gather a large number of lesser asteroids, launch them into orbit, and they will attract the main asteroid away.
It is a plan that requires the movie to treat physics as a suggestion. Collision Course does not mind. It has a volcano, a lost world, flying dinosaurs and a wedding anniversary to get through.
The cast list is long and mostly wasted. Jessie J voices Brooke. Nick Offerman voices Gavin. Jesse Tyler Ferguson voices Shangri Llama. Josh Peck and Seann William Scott return as Eddie and Crash. Denis Leary is back as Diego.
Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Josh Peck, Simon Pegg, Seann William Scott, Jennifer Lopez and Queen Latifah all reprise roles from the earlier films. Lopez and Queen Latifah are not broken out in the cast list above, which is its own tell about how much this movie has for them to do.
None of them get much beyond showing up.
The Release Schedule Behind the Film
Here is the schedule the film was working against.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| June 19, 2016 | Premieres at the Sydney Film Festival |
| July 22, 2016 | Theatrical release in the United States by 20th Century Fox |
| 2022 | Spin-off The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild released |
| 2027 | Sequel Ice Age: Boiling Point scheduled |
That table is the whole story. A series that started in 2002 with a wordless squirrel and a glacier had, by 2016, run out of ice.
Collision Course grossed $408 million against a $105 million production budget. It performed better internationally than at home, where it was deemed a disappointment. The money says people still wanted to see these characters. The film says nobody involved knew what to do with them.
Where the Movie Falls Apart
The asteroid plot is not the problem. The problem is that Collision Course cannot decide whether it is a family comedy about a father letting go of his daughter or a science fiction adventure about saving the planet from space rocks.
So it does both, badly. Manny’s objection to Julian gets a handful of scenes and no resolution worth the name. Diego and Shira’s wish for children is introduced and then abandoned. Sid’s break-up with Francine is a joke with no punchline.
Buck’s electromagnetic theory is the closest the film comes to a real idea, and it arrives in the third act like a homework answer copied the night before. The dromaeosaurs’ plan to let the world end so they can rule what is left is genuinely dark. It is also dropped almost as soon as it is raised.
The animation is fine. The voice cast is fine. Fine is the ceiling here.
Ice Age: Collision Course is a 95-minute film that feels like a contractual obligation. It has the shape of a movie — a threat, a quest, a herd, a climax — and none of the momentum. The jokes land soft. The emotional beats are announced rather than earned. Scrat and his acorn, the franchise’s one reliable engine, start the plot and then largely sit it out.
The series had already survived a fourth film that most people remember only for its title. Collision Course is worse, because it is not even memorably bad. It is a film that happens to you and then stops. The 2022 spin-off and the 2027 sequel suggest the studio still sees value in these characters. On this evidence, the value is nostalgic, not creative. Buck Wild at least had the sense to center Buck. Collision Course centers a committee.
3.4 of 10.
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