Directors: Mike Thurmeier & Galen T. Chu
Voiced By: Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Simon Pegg, Melissa Rauch, Jennifer Lopez, Seann William Scott, Max Greenfield,
Roughly thirteen years on since the first Ice Age was released and the gang are still going strong, Manny, Sid and Diego. This one being the fifth in the feature length series and the longest, by only a few minutes. Supposedly the final in the franchise we see an expected happy ending instead of total extinction.
It's the full film extension of Blue Sky Studio's short, Cosmic Scrat-tastrophe which was released last year, obviously starring Ice Age favourite Scrat, who intergalactically haphazardly arranges the planets in imaginative fashion whilst inadvertently thrusting an asteroid towards the Earth threatening all of it's existence, of course, all because of that elusive nut.
Simon Pegg's Buck returns for more of a main role, leading the team to save the planet and is highly entertaining, more so than the rest of the pack. The story sidetracks a little more with Manny than Sid and Diego and there's quite a lot that goes on with an assortment of fresh characters including dino-birds and a spiritual spitting llama.
There's an underlining message about excepting change and moving on, letting go and growing up which makes way for the subplot of Julian and Francine's relationship. It's seems family and marriage plays an important part of the story but not to the level to become boring or bogged down by it.
John Debney composes the score this time round taking over from John Powell who has done quite a lot of animated features, like Rio, Happy Feet, Shrek and How To Train Your Dragon. Nothing really stood out from the score but the soundtrack, using Trevor Rabin's Armageddon theme tune was cheeky and Buck sings a clever twist of what I'm sure is Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.
The animation is far superior than when you look back at the first Ice Age in 2002. It's come a long way since then and while I was watching Scrat move planets I was thinking this might be worth the extra to see in 3D. Incredible detail and the action flows superbly, especially Buck's scenes.
It's fast paced I believe in hope to not lose the attention of the kids, it has a surefire script with gag after gag, where characters literally bounce off one another creating enough comedy for everyone though it lacks the out loud laughter and some Sid silliness falls flat.
It's above average, light entertainment for the whole family that is, for some part, visually stunning and fans of the series should enjoy it, but I doubt it'll be a film to end up on my shelf.
Running Time: 6
The Cast: 7
Performance: 7
Direction: 7
Story: 5
Script: 6
Creativity: 8
Soundtrack: 6
Job Description: 6
The Extra Bonus Point: 0
58% 6/10
