Tuesday 28 June 2016

Film Review: "Ice Age: Collision Course" (2016).


"They're going out with a bang" in Ice Age: Collision Course. This computer-animated comic science fiction film directed by Mike Thurmeier and Galen Tan Chu, written by Michael J. Wilson, Michael Berg and Yoni Brenner, and produced by produced by Blue Sky Studios. It is the sequel to Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), and the fifth installment in the Ice Age film series. Scrat's epic pursuit of the elusive acorn catapults him into the universe where he accidentally sets off a series of cosmic events that transform and threaten the Ice Age World. To save themselves, Sid, Manny, Diego, and the rest of the herd must leave their home and embark on a quest full of comedy and adventure, traveling to exotic new lands and encountering a host of colourful new characters.

After the financial success of Ice Age: Continental Drift, the creative team at Blue Sky Studios went back to the previous films to search for possible inspiration for the next installment. Inspired by the first and third Ice Age films, they conceived the concept for Collision Course. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Jennifer Lopez and Simon Pegg, returned to reprise their roles, with Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Adam DeVine, Nick Offerman, Max Greenfield, Stephanie Beatriz, Melissa Rauch, Michael Strahan, Jessie J and Neil deGrasse Tyson cast as new additions. The recording sessions took place in Los Angeles, California. For the animation, the characters were first hand-drawn on animation software, complete with color and animated clips of the characters doing specific actions. They were then sent to be hand-sculpted with clay, and ultimately scanned into CGI software and animated around the model. In June 2015, the film's title was revealed. The film was originally scheduled for a July 15, 2016. However, the release was delayed to July 22, to avoid competition with Ghostbusters (2016).

The film features the voice talents of Romano, Leguizamo, Leary, Latifah, William Scott, Peck, Lopez and Pegg, reprising their roles, with Tyler Ferguson, DeVine, Offerman, Greenfield, Beatriz, Rauch, Strahan, Jessie J and deGrasse Tyson. The cast worked hard, and their characters are amusingly designed, but it's not nearly enough to shake the sense that we're watching elaborate filler.

Ice Age: Collision Course has moments of charm and witty slapstick, but it often seems content to recycle ideas from the previous films. Watching this film was a cheerless exercise for me. The characters are manic and idiotic, the dialogue is rat-a-tat chatter, the action is entirely at the service of the 3-D, and the movie depends on bright colors, lots of noise and a few songs in between the whiplash moments. It's familiar, drawn-out shtick, and the humor lacks the subtlety of the first and best Ice Age, but there are some visually inventive high points. Not only is this instalment arguably the worst in the franchise yet, it's also, a unsurprisingly, perhaps given that it's a fourth movie in a franchise, turned around on a strict cycle, turned out to be thoroughly, thoroughly boring family blockbuster.

Simon says Ice Age: Collision Course receives:



Also, see my review for The Peanuts Movie.

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