Review Rating: 7
When Pangea begins splitting into different continents, Manny and the males of the absurd herd are separated from Ellie and Peaches, and have to fight pirates to find their way back together!
The fourth installment of the still-popular Ice Age franchise starts off featuring the poor deplorable Scrat trying to, once again, find a place to store his acorn and inadvertently causing Pangea to split off into continents. It’s a little too goofy for me for a beginning, but we’re willing to forgive it if they get better as the movie progresses. Meanwhile, Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) are trying to deal with Peaches (Keke Palmer) as a willful teenager now, torn between wanting to hang with her outcast molehog friend Louis (Josh Gad) and be accepted by the other mammoth teenagers, especially Ethan (Aubrey Graham) whom she has a crush on, while Sid’s family is (briefly) returning to foist a completely bonkers Granny on him. And now we know where Sid gets his…uniqueness. Suddenly in the midst of a mammoth argument, there’s an earthquake that splits the ice floes and separates the family. Manny, Sid (John Leguizamo), Diego (Denis Leary) and oh hell Granny (Wanda Sykes) too, manage to survive a huge storm and are determinedly trying to get back to where Manny yelled for the remnants of his family to meet back up, when they get accosted by singing pirates!
Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage) is a Gigantopithecus (yes go ahead and say that out loud, I’ll wait) of the floating iceberg turned pirate ship, and finally we now have a love interest for Diego, in the form of sabertooth first mate Shira (Jennifer Lopez). Captain Gutt and the rest of the crew try to press gang the men of the absurd herd into joining the ship, and when that doesn’t work insists on making them walk the plank, that annoying Granny first. Much chaos ensues that ends up sinking the pirate ship, and Gutt vows revenge. Shira gets tossed from the crew, just as Diego prophesied she would, and ends up helping the Absurd Herd, just as we knew she would. Off we go for the final confrontations! Oh and did I mention Scrat and his finding of Scratlantis? I didn’t? That’s because, well, it’s a little more ridiculous than usual, but hey that’s me.
The singing pirates help make the movie. Granny and her Precious, that helps too. And sure, Diego finally got a love interest. Peaches learned valuable life lessons, kept her friends and even got a love interest of her own. But the Ice Age franchise is becoming a bit strained. After Scrat mistakenly broke the ice age world into the continents of what-is-now Earth, there doesn’t seem to be much left. I can say, though, that this is one of the few movies where 3D actually made it more enjoyable and watchable.