Kids movies like this have a record of getting dodgier and dodgier the more they make. To my surprise, Ice Age didn’t live up to that. At movie-number-three, I thought they kept getting better and better. But this fourth? Put it this way, I think the boat of the Ice Age franchise has…sunk.

It was alright. The hilarious moments I watch the Ice Age movies for were delightfully peppered with the appearance of Sid’s long-lost grandmother and its classic humour moments. But…whoever was on script writing was having a bad day. They did have strikes of inspiration, but for the most part, I felt like I was hearing a scripts snatched from a thousand other movies and mixed into this one. The lines were ridiculously cliche.


“It’s all my fault!”
“I will get back to you!”
“Oh, that person wasn’t really my friend (to get in with the cool mammoths).”

And then when the evil-ape-thingy rocked up, he started off with a song, would you believe, singing about how bad he is. Now, that’s all very well, but for the record, none of the previous Ice Ages have had particularly musical elements unless they’re mimicking a well known song (take Food Glorious Food for instance.) Had the song been something hilarious, like I’ve Got a Dream from Tangled, sure. A weird, eccentricity of the bad guy, which everyone thought was stupid, sure. But when the crew joined in, I just cringed. This is not what I watch Ice Age for.

The incredibly irritating prehistoric ape, was, well.. incredibly irritating. He wasn’t scary and he wasn’t funny and he hand no purpose but to be the badie. He did not add to the story at all.

The little subplot of Peaches (Manny’s teenage daughter) wanting to be in the cool mammoth group… I guess it’s nice that they found something applicable for today’s youth. Problem. 1. Any teenager who wants to get in the cool group is not going to be watching this and actually apply it to themselves (if they wanted some application, they should have made one for kids, maybe 5-8 years old) and 2. It’s been so over done that no one would listen anyway. And done better. Take Mean Girls for instance. Main plot exactly the same as this subplot. And a whole lot funnier (perhaps just because I could identify with a few things about the homeschooler going to high school…) But now I rabbit trail.

The addition of a girl sabre tooth tiger (because we can’t have unmarried characters like Diego, can we?) was interesting. She certainly wasn’t a bad character… but she turned from friend to foe far too quickly. She could have been more, but she wasn’t.

In sort, if you’re an Ice Age fan like me, watch it. Laugh. And dearly hope they don’t make an Ice Age 5.