Five films down and the Ice Age franchise is, 14 years after it first hit screens, finally running out of steam – and the movie feels like it knows this. There’s nothing offensively bad about this latest entry, but there’s also not much here to draw new fans in or anyone other than the diehard longtime fans back.
It kicks off with, as usual, Scrat’s acorn-attaining ineptitude causing mayhem but this time, it ends up with him being thrust into space which, in itself, shows how far the franchise has to go now for inspiration. This sets off a series of events that lead to meteors hurtling towards Earth.
Of course, Manny ( Ray Romano) , Sid ( John Leguizamo) , Diego ( Denis Leary) and the rest of their crew head off on an adventure to try and stop that happening. As usual, on that journey, they come across a host of moderately interesting characters such as Nick Offerman’s bad dino-bird Gavin and his family, Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Shangri Llama and Jessie J’s Brooke – all of whom are either weakly developed, underused and feel somewhat wasted.