Monday, August 1, 2016

Ice Age: Collision Course - The Fifth Installment of Ice Age Franchise

Well it has been a rather crazy weekend as my wife and I went for a second movie marathon day in a row on Sunday. But instead of 3 movies like on Saturday, we only watched 2 movies yesterday. First one that we watched was an animated movie which we were hoping would give us tons of laughs like we had in previous Ice Age movies.

Brief Story Line

Unlike the Disney/Pixar movies, there was no short animated movie prior to the start of this film. So it immediately started with Scrat our favorite squirrel who was still obsessed with his acorn and while he was trying to bury it on the ice surface, dropped to a place where there was a space ship (yes you read it right, a space ship). While still trying to get the acorn, Scrat accidentally activated the space ship and went flying out of space. Due to these actions, the space ship had made all the planets revolving around the sun and also made a huge asteroid attracted to earth.

Meanwhile on earth, Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano - Everybody Loves Raymond TV series) was worried with his daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) growing up and going to marry Julian (Adam Devine - Pitch Perfect). He believed that Julian was not good enough for Peaches. His wife Ellie (Queen Latifah - Valentine's Day, 22 Jump Street etc) encouraged Manny to get to know Julian better. Diego the tiger (Denis Leary - The Amazing Spiderman) and Sid the sloth (John Lequizamo - Carlito's Way, Chef etc) also share the same thought. 

During the night celebrating the anniversary of Manny and Ellie, there were so many lights in the sky and finally they realized there was a meteor shower coming to earth. The party was cut short, despite Manny still quarelling with Peaches as she was going to leave for adventure after marrying Julian. All of the herd, including Shira the female tiger (Jennifer Lopez - so many movies), Granny Sid's grandmother (Wanda Sykes - Evan Almighty)  and Crash & Eddie (Sean William Scott - American Pie series) hid inside a cave until the meteor shower cleared.

On the other side of the continent, a place where some dinosaurs still existed, Buck the one eyed weasel (Simon Pegg - Shaun of the Dead, Star Trek etc) had taken away an egg from 3 dinosaurs who stole it and made them offended. Buck escaped from the 3 of them and found his way to Manny and the herd. He told Manny that there was a reason for the huge asteroid coming to earth which would wipe out the earth and literally kill the entire civilization. So Buck with the help from Manny and his friends would go on a journey to save the world while being chased by the 3 dinosaurs.

So can Buck, Manny, Sid, Diego and the rest of the herd really save the world? Can they escape from the 3 dinosaurs who wanted to prevent it from happening? What was the real reason for the asteroid coming to earth? And what would Scrat's role be in this? Find them all in their adventures.

End of Brief Story Line

After watching this movie, I felt that it was not as fun and hilarious as the previous installments. I thought some of the scenes were not funny enough. At first I thought my wife enjoyed it so much coz she laughed quite a lot. But apparently she told me she had the same feeling as I did. For me the story was felt to be too forced. The Scrat's scenes were also too much and made the story line became uncharacteristically not funny. In previous installments, Scrat had always been only in very minor role and usually did not have major impact. But in this movie I personally felt it was just too much and reached the point of no longer funny.

Of course there were some good as well in this movie, like the great visual animation, and there was a scene with Bucky which I believed would have been very cool in 3D (we watched in the normal 2D). Some kids may also enjoy the fun of the chase and the colorful pictures, but as the story continued, I think even those kids grew tired and they did not laugh as hard as in the beginning. There was also a character voiced by Jessie J and of course she sang a song as well in the end credit scene. 

Bottom line, I was a little bit disappointed with this one and perhaps it would not be a good idea for them to make a 6th installment. Unless if they wanted to get back to basics like in the 1st one which was very good according to me (the one where only Manny, Sid and Diego helping to return a toddler to human family).

Anyway, if you are interested in bringing your children to watch this movie, I think still quite ok. But if you plan to watch this without them, perhaps it's better if you watch other movies.

Mike's Movie Moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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