Post by Assman on Sept 3, 2012 13:16:30 GMT
Just got back from the cinema after seeing this, thought it was quite good. Basically Manny the mammoth and the gang get split up from the rest of their 'herd' after a continental landscape shift and they have to get back to the mainland after being stranded on an iceberg.
The film was very, very short - it started at 12:20pm with a Simpsons short involving Maggie at a children's play centre, so Ice Age 4 itself started at 12:25 and we were outside again by 1:40. Weirdly Wikipedia says it's 93 minutes long but it's actually about 70, so the plot is fairly basic and feels somewhat rushed because of the short length. There wasn't a massive amount of humour, mainly visual with characters sliding about and crashing into each other. Sid however was excellent, at one point in the movie he gets paralyzed after eating a dodgy berry and the scene that follows had me in stitches and was easily the highlight for me. A few new characters were introduced (everyone on the left of the poster above for starters) who excluding the monkey didn't really add much, neither did Manny's daughter Peaches. The one character who was decent was Sid's granny, but otherwise no new memorable characters to speak of. Thankfully if they do an Ice Age 5 only two or three will probably return which is a relief, the recurring cast is getting huge now and it's hard getting any character development going - the best example is with Diego, he gets his own sub-story which never really gets going.
I will say the graphics were fantastic, if you ever get the chance to watch it in 3D it'll probably look amazing. So yeah, 3/5 stars for me mainly based on the visuals and Sid being generally hysterical. Scrat the rat makes a return doing more of the same as in the previous films, that was amusing enough but I'd had enough of him by the end to be honest as he gets a sizable amount of screen time in what is as mentioned a very short movie.
So in conclusion, here's how I'd rank the Ice Age movies - 1 > 3 > 4 > 2