Product Description
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Historys greatest heroes return for the most outrageously funny
and entertaining Ice Age adventure in two million years. When
Scrats acorn antics cause a cataclysmic crack-up, Manny (Ray
Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo) and Diego (Denis Leary) go where no
herd has gone before on a high-seas quest aboard a floating
iceberg. But a menagerie of misfit pirates are determined to
shiver their timbers and capsize their journey home. Join a
boat-load of lovable new characters (voiced by Jennifer Lopez,
Aziz Ansari and Peter Dinklage) for original songs, spectacular
animation and heartwarming family fun.
.com
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The revisionist version of natural history offered up in the Ice
Age movies gets yet another twist in the fourth installment, 10
years after Manny the woolly mammoth, Diego the saber-toothed
tiger, Sid the sloth, and Scrat the squirrel made their chilly
debut to hot box-office receipts. The lessons of family and
loyalty in Continental Drift may seem a little warmed over, but
the creatively constructed laughs, amusing voice
characterizations, and inventive CGI animation are reason enough
to keep the series viable for kids to giggle about and grownups
to belly laugh over--sometimes for exactly the same reasons. Once
again, acorn-addicted Scrat is the cause of some pretty important
behind-the-scenes machinations. His dialogue-free antics also
serve as a stand-alone subplot that could easily be a very clever
short film of its own. This time the weasely rodent's addled
obsession with the fruit of the oak is revealed as the cause of
the formation of the world's continents as we now know them. He
sets the story--and planet Earth--in motion while pursuing a
little nut in a hyperactive prologue that causes underground
rifts that in turn form the famous shapes of Australia, Africa,
North America, and the outline of Italy (which it turns out is
shaped like a boot for a very good reason). Above ground this
means more global chaos for the herd of animals we've come to
know so well. All the familiar voices reprise their wonderful
roles as fissures in earth and ice separate Manny (Ray Romano)
from his woolly wife Ellie (Queen Latifah) and boy-crazy teenager
Peaches (Keke Palmer). With a killer continental shelf bearing
down on them, mother and daughter lead the madcap pack of animal
characters toward a safe meeting place while Manny, Diego (Denis
Leary), Sid (John Leguizamo), and Sid's crazy granny (Wanda
Sykes) drift away on an iceberg schooner into a newly vast open
ocean. While floating into oblivion, the mismatched pack
encounters a band of animal pirates piloting another slab of
ship-shaped ice, captained by a crazed baboon named Gutt (Peter
Dinklage), who's bent on resentment-based revenge. The motley
crew provides a plethora of comic encounters and a new raft of
excellent voice actors. Running a close second to Dinklage in
ingenious casting is Jennifer Lopez as Shira, a sultry tiger who,
don't cha know, ends up on the good ship and falling for Diego in
the end. The adventures of both the land- and sea-based creatures
are full of clever gags and densely constructed set pieces that
may not be quite up to Pixar story standards, but are certainly
always on the ball and executed with computer-animation acumen
that is astonishingly lifelike for such an unreal-looking world.
Scrat's misadventures act as interstitial connectors to the
parallel heroes' journey stories until they ultimately intersect
in a massively scaled finale. Even after all the melting and
refreezing, the Ice Age world is still a hot commodity in the
animated-franchise business and remains a good investment despite
the constancy of global rifts in entertaining family fare. --Ted
Fry