The film kicks off by playing the franchise’s ongoing trump card, Scrat the acorn-hunting squirrel. Scrat’s always been a highlight, and he is again here, with his adventures harking back to the likes of Chuck Jones’ and Fred Quimby’s Tom & Jerry shorts. When we first meet him here, his search for a nut takes him to the core of the Earth, and he puts into motion the events that cause, er, the continents of the planet to be formed. Let’s deal with the weaker parts of the film first, then. When the narrative focuses on Peaches, her teen romance angst, and the need to teach her lessons about the importance of family, Ice Age 4 feels like a bunch of homogenous animated flicks. Furthermore, that tremendous opening sketch aside, it does take a little while for the film to fully kick into life. Its core narrative is hardly radical stuff, either, as Manny and his friends journey back to be reunited with the others. We’ve seen that sort of thing many times before. Turns out, though, so have the filmmakers. And at the point where Manny does a line lifted straight out of Last Of The Mohicans, your ears can’t help but prick up. By the time the credits have rolled, there have been welcome tips of the hat to other movies, and worked into the excellent finale there’s a musical tribute of sorts to Die Hard, too. All very much appreciated. Its new characters are, generally, enormous fun too. Shira (we like to think she was named in a miss-spelled tribute to Masters Of The Universe, but maybe not) isn’t given much to do, but Sid’s gran (voiced by Wanda Sykes) is quite brilliant, as is the wonderful pirate, Captain Gutt (voiced by Game Of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage!) For this is the kind of film Ice Age 4 is: it works hard, and it’ll throw anything at you, if it thinks it’ll entertain you. That’s why you get some great action sequences, an unwillingness to resist any half-decent joke, some pirates, an army of creatures, and boats shaped out of icebergs. Heck, it even gets away with including a song. On a technical level, too, the film is a real triumph. We’ve never seen water done anywhere near this well in an animated movie before (above or below the surface), and the landscapes and waterscapes are frequently held in long shots, just to give you a chance to fully appreciate them, which you inevitably will. When the Ice Age franchise first started out, technically it was some way behind much of the competition. Not any more. The film looks outstanding. We saw it in 2D, incidentally, but it’s clear that effort has been made this time around to include proper 3D moments. Unlike Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs, this one has clearly been designed with some 3D in mind. It may not be a perfect beast, and the film is still a little too slavish to some of the less interesting conventions of a family movie. But Ice Age 4: Continental Drift was always conceived and made as a piece of family blockbuster entertainment. That’s something it absolutely is, and by keeping a firm sense of fun very much at the forefront of things, the team behind it have delivered something worth cherishing: an immensely good fun summer movie, warts and all. It might not win bags of awards, but for a family movie, you most certainly get your money’s worth. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
title: “Ice Age 4 Continental Drift Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-08-29” author: “Christopher Crawley”
The film kicks off by playing the franchise’s ongoing trump card, Scrat the acorn-hunting squirrel. Scrat’s always been a highlight, and he is again here, with his adventures harking back to the likes of Chuck Jones’ and Fred Quimby’s Tom & Jerry shorts. When we first meet him here, his search for a nut takes him to the core of the Earth, and he puts into motion the events that cause, er, the continents of the planet to be formed. Let’s deal with the weaker parts of the film first, then. When the narrative focuses on Peaches, her teen romance angst, and the need to teach her lessons about the importance of family, Ice Age 4 feels like a bunch of homogenous animated flicks. Furthermore, that tremendous opening sketch aside, it does take a little while for the film to fully kick into life. Its core narrative is hardly radical stuff, either, as Manny and his friends journey back to be reunited with the others. We’ve seen that sort of thing many times before. Turns out, though, so have the filmmakers. And at the point where Manny does a line lifted straight out of Last Of The Mohicans, your ears can’t help but prick up. By the time the credits have rolled, there have been welcome tips of the hat to other movies, and worked into the excellent finale there’s a musical tribute of sorts to Die Hard, too. All very much appreciated. Its new characters are, generally, enormous fun too. Shira (we like to think she was named in a miss-spelled tribute to Masters Of The Universe, but maybe not) isn’t given much to do, but Sid’s gran (voiced by Wanda Sykes) is quite brilliant, as is the wonderful pirate, Captain Gutt (voiced by Game Of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage!) For this is the kind of film Ice Age 4 is: it works hard, and it’ll throw anything at you, if it thinks it’ll entertain you. That’s why you get some great action sequences, an unwillingness to resist any half-decent joke, some pirates, an army of creatures, and boats shaped out of icebergs. Heck, it even gets away with including a song. On a technical level, too, the film is a real triumph. We’ve never seen water done anywhere near this well in an animated movie before (above or below the surface), and the landscapes and waterscapes are frequently held in long shots, just to give you a chance to fully appreciate them, which you inevitably will. When the Ice Age franchise first started out, technically it was some way behind much of the competition. Not any more. The film looks outstanding. We saw it in 2D, incidentally, but it’s clear that effort has been made this time around to include proper 3D moments. Unlike Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs, this one has clearly been designed with some 3D in mind. It may not be a perfect beast, and the film is still a little too slavish to some of the less interesting conventions of a family movie. But Ice Age 4: Continental Drift was always conceived and made as a piece of family blockbuster entertainment. That’s something it absolutely is, and by keeping a firm sense of fun very much at the forefront of things, the team behind it have delivered something worth cherishing: an immensely good fun summer movie, warts and all. It might not win bags of awards, but for a family movie, you most certainly get your money’s worth. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
