Ice Age: Collision Course is a movie about a comet hitting Earth, and it does not understand what that means. The film opens with Manny, Sid, Ellie and Diego chasing a herd of mammoths across a frozen tundra, but the plot spends its first half hour doing nothing with that premise. Then the comet arrives, and the movie still does not know what to do. It is a comedy, a disaster movie, and a sequel that seems less interested in the animals it follows than in selling them to a younger audience. None of it works.
Trailer, via 20th Century Studios UK.
The Comet Arrives Too Late
The comet is the entire point of Ice Age: Collision Course. It should drive the stakes, the action and the jokes. Instead, the filmmakers treat it as a punchline. Manny and Ellie’s daughter Peaches gets separated from her family, and the comet is the excuse for a chase across the globe. But the chase feels like a placeholder for a bigger idea the writers never developed.
“We’re doomed!”
That line, delivered by Sid, sums up the movie’s attitude toward its own threat. It is funny once. It loses its power fast. The film keeps returning to the comet as a joke rather than a danger, and the result is a disaster movie that never raises its heart rate.
A Plot That Wanders
The middle stretch of Ice Age: Collision Course is a mess. Manny and Ellie split up to find Peaches, while Diego and Sid get caught up in a side adventure involving a villain named Buck. The two threads barely talk to each other, and the film’s runtime stretches past 90 minutes without giving either one room to breathe. The pacing is slow, the setup is heavy, and the payoff never comes.
The film introduces new characters and settings without giving the audience time to care. A cave full of singing animals is cute for five seconds, but it runs for several minutes. By the time Buck shows up, he is a cartoon villain with no real threat. He is a plot device, not a character.
Sid Steals the Movie
Sid is the only character who knows what he is doing in Ice Age: Collision Course. His schemes and jokes carry scenes that the script otherwise drags through. He is the reason anyone watches this movie, and he is the reason it holds together at all.
But even Sid cannot save a film this thin. His best moments come when the script stops trying to be clever and lets him be himself. The film’s attempts at wit fall flat because the jokes are built on setups that never pay off. Sid is a running gag machine, but the machine needs oil, and the oil is missing.
The Animation Is Fine
The animation in Ice Age: Collision Course is competent. The landscapes are detailed, the character designs are expressive, and the action sequences are fluid. None of that matters when the story beneath it is hollow.
The film looks like a Pixar movie without the heart. It moves like a DreamWorks comedy without the timing. The visuals are there to sell the premise, but the premise is weak, and the visuals cannot compensate.
A Cast Without Purpose
The voice cast includes familiar faces and new names. Denis Leary returns as Sid, and Buck appears as a villain. The chemistry is gone. The actors sound like they are reading lines from a script they do not believe in.
The film adds a new character, a young mammoth named Peaches. She is meant to be the emotional center, but she is introduced late and never earns her role. The film forgets about her for long stretches, and when she finally returns, the resolution feels rushed.
The Running Time Is a Problem
At over 90 minutes, Ice Age: Collision Course feels padded. Scenes that should last thirty seconds run twice as long. The chase across the globe could have been a ten-minute montage, but it is stretched out to fill space. The result is a movie that feels unfinished, as if the filmmakers ran out of ideas and decided to pad the runtime anyway.
The film’s biggest flaw is its lack of urgency. A comet is coming, and the characters act like it is a minor inconvenience. There is no sense of time running out, no tension in the countdown, no dread in the wait. The film treats the comet as a joke, and a joke is not a threat.
The Verdict on Ice Age: Collision Course
Ice Age: Collision Course is a disappointment. It takes a great franchise and misuses it. The comet is a gift, and the film throws it away. The characters deserve better, and the audience deserves better. This is a film that should have been funny, exciting and heartfelt, and it ends up being none of those things.
Sid is the only reason to watch. Even he cannot save this one. The comet is a symbol of everything wrong with this movie: a threat that is ignored, a premise that is wasted, a story that never finds its footing. Ice Age: Collision Course is a failure, and its failure is complete.
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