The entire Ice Age oeuvre hinges on the idea that John Leguizamo’s humor can carry a film. *blam* Sorry, I just blacked out for a second. What was I saying? Something about Leguizamo, right? How does that guy find work?
Ice Age: Continental Drift has the benefit of not being Ice Age: Dawn if the Dinosaurs. Thus endeth the asset column. This nothing little tale has a skittles assortment of colors and maddeningly bland characters who make darn sure that all feelings stronger than “oh” will be kept under wraps for the next 87 minutes. If you like to feel things; if you go to the movies to invoke emotional responses within you or others, I suggest you depart Driftwood right after the Simpsons short. There’s more heart in wordless Maggie S. and her butterfly than the entirely of the prehistoric pap to follow.
If for fortunate reason, you’ve missed out on the Ice Age of Enlightenment, here’s the deal: Manny (Ray Romano) is a mammoth, Diego (Denis Leary) is a sabertooth tiger and Sid (Leguizamo) is a sloth, and they’re all the bestest of 
friends. This is important in teaching us all a valuable lesson in tolerance or zoology or hygiene or something. As the movies have evolved (snicker), our main quadrupeds have attached themselves to family and now peripheral characters can annoy us as well. Lucky me, this particular iteration has a fair dose of Wanda Sykes as Sid’s grandma; I find Wanda equally as entertaining as grating steel wool against my teeth.
The particular venue of these prehistoric farm animals is as stable, geologically, as Charlie Sheen. It is as if punctuated equilibrium is happening here, now, on film, in cartoon form. During the session early in Drift, a fissure literally separates Manny and the Mammals from his mammoth family; the rest of the plot is about watching this group get their ice to floe back to family. There are pirates, menacing, evil pirates, I guess. I mean they seem sort of menacing, why they make you walk the plank and everything. (so why did you rescue mammoth, tiger and sloths in the first place?) And what do these guys eat? You’re gonna tell me that a tiger stuck on an ice berg is just gonna take one for the team?
Fact is, I don’t care. Eat. Don’t eat. Joke. Don’t joke. Entertain. Don’t entertain. It doesn’t matter. Well, I guess I care that I’m not entertained.
It won’t make you cry/on that I’ll wage
Let it drift a-sea/this dull Ice Age
Animal follies/not worth sore rant
With sequels increasingly/unimportant
Rated PG, 88 Minutes
D: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
W: Michael Berg, Jason Fuchs
Genre: Direct-to-video via the theater
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Potential babysitters
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Anti-3D purists
