Manny the Wooly Mammoth and the whole gang return to the big screen in Ice Age: Collision Course, the fifth installment to what many has already considered to be, by far, the most successful digital animation movie franchise in history.
Keeping with the tradition, Ice Age: Collision Course kicks off with the lovable, and hillariously clumsy, Scrat still on his quest to catch (and keep) his beloved acorn. This time around, it gets caught on a lever of an alien spacecraft long been frozen. As he tries to dislodge the elusive acorn, Scrat launches himself and his acorn into outer space, which eventually caused a series of catastrophic events leading to a huge asteriod hurling down to Earth.
Back on Earth, Manny (Ray Romano) begins to exhibit the signs of the typical father unwilling yet to let his only daughter, Peaches (Keke Palmer), get married to a mammoth named Julian (Adam Devine), especially after learning that they have decided to move far away and see the world. The wedding, and the wooly mammoth family issues, are temporarily put on hold when the one-eyed weasel, Buck (Simon Pegg) re-emerges to warn them about the oncoming apocalypse and devices a plan to prevent it from happening.
To say that the Ice Age movie franchise has come a very long way is an understatement, both good and bad. When the first film came out in 2002, the storyline may have been fictitious, but it was still within what is considered to be acceptable in real life. When Mike Thurmeier started to take the helm as one of the co-directors of the franchise beginning with Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, efforts to keep the animated film to stick with acceptable prehistoric timelines were set aside for entertainment’s sake.
The fact that Ice Age: Collision Course is an animated film geared towards children, there is that delicate balance between providing entertainment and valuable lessons that should never be forgotten. Sadly, that was the case here. Yes, it is a cartoon and yes, it was created to entertain both the young and young at heart alike. But when the end credits rolls and the popcorn has been consumed, it is now up to the parents and teachers to remedy re-educate the children about what they have seen, and to teach them that the solar system was not formed because a saber-tooth squirrel had a few blunders in an alien spacecraft while he tries to get hold and keep (hopefully this time around) a beloved acorn, there is no realm beneath us where dinosaurs still roam, asteroids never fall on earth in the same place because of some huge magnet, and sending out magnets into outer space will not divert any asteroid on a direct collision with Earth, no matter how much we’d like the latter to be the case.
When purely looking at Ice Age: Collision Course just for entertainment, there definitely is no doubt that it once again had managed to deliver. However, all movie franchises, even the best ones, have to end. The continuous twisted realities prevalent in Ice Age: Collission Course may be a sign that maybe, it might be really be nearing its end.
