Saturday, July 14, 2012

Ice Age: Continental Drift

I chuckled a couple of times, shed no tears, and was not at all impressed with Ice Age: Continental Drift. In this 4th outing, the story has drifted off course and lost its innocence. Sure, the lessons are still there - the importance of the herd (or family, whatever it's makeup), what it means to be a friend, the stresses and changes of coming of age, and respect for elders. But there was something mean-spirited about it. What has changed is the adversary, this time Captain Gutt, an evil primate and leader of a motley band of pirates, voiced by Peter Dinklage. Dinklage does an excellent job with the part, maybe too good, as the heartless and menacing villain. In the previous films, it seems to me that the bad guys we're predators, doing what predators do. In this case, Captain Gutt was just evil and all too human; and this cast a cloud over the whole film. There were also issues of teen angst that might have been OK if not under that cloud, but in this case they just added to the darker atmosphere.

Two bright spots did succeed in peeking through all the gloom. The ever optimistic Sid was as clueless, optimistic, and lovable as ever. Skrat, ever in pursuit of his goal, was welcome relief each time he dropped into the picture; and his big scene near the end must surely be an homage to my hero, Daffy Duck.

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