Ice Age: Continental Drift
Release Date:
July 13, 2012
On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 141/169 |
Max Braden |
The family/friends/teammwork message is good for kids, that's fine, but there's very little novel or interesting about the movie. |
At the end of 2009, BOP chronicled the top film industry stories of that year. One of the selections was Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, a title that exemplified the growing importance of overseas revenue to Hollywood titles. The first two titles in the franchise had already grossed over a billion dollars worldwide, and so a strong performance by the third title was a foregone conclusion of sorts. Despite this, its results still managed to shock industry observers.
Ice Age and Ice Age: The Meltdown attained $664 million in international box office receipts. Dawn of the Dinosaurs effectively matched The Meltdown in terms of domestic take with $196.5 million opposed to $195.3 million. So, its overseas run was a complete shock. The third Ice Age movie earned $694 million internationally, more than the previous two films had managed in combined. And those were box office blockbusters. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs earned $890 million overall, making it the number three title of 2009. As I type this, it is the 17th global blockbuster of all time. Shock of shocks, there will be a sequel.
Ice Age: Continental Drift is not the sort of title you will want your children to use as an educational tool. The constant disregard of scientific knowledge about history is something Ice Age creators Blue Sky Studios have been doing since the first sequel. They are taking creative license with millennia of cataclysmic events in order to return the three main characters: Manny, Sid and Diego. These are a mammoth, a sloth and a sabre-toothed tiger (technically cat but that sounds less cool), respectively.
Those of you watched the third movie probably remember that there were happy endings for all involved. The initial plan was to mothball Ice Age for a while after the third movie. Its box office prohibited this from occurring. Ergo, the start of the fourth film will see the big happy family that is the core group split by – and I have to hand it to the writers for this one – everyone’s favorite nut-chaser, Scrat. His latest attempt to acquire acorns (how has the incompetent hunter not starved to death yet?) accidentally splits the land mass of Pangaea into the continental shapes we know today. Yes, the state of planet Earth is because of Scrat. In hindsight, we should have been rooting for his death during all of those perilous moments when he (?) should have plunged to his death.
The three protagonists from the Ice Age trilogy wind up on one chunk of ice while the family they have been nurturing over the past few years is on the other. This unexpected separation drives all of them to spend the body of the movie attempting to re-unite. Meanwhile, Scrat probably falls from significant heights while trying to eat acorns. Has Mythbusters ever taken on the Ice Age universe? They would have a field day.
You know what Ice Age is by now. If you have children, you almost certainly will be watching this. Then again, it doesn’t matter if you do because Ice Age is so popular abroad that its domestic box office borders on irrelevant. It could conceivably earn a billion dollars worldwide with less than 20% of that coming from North American revenue. (David Mumpower/BOP)
Vital statistics for Ice Age: Continental Drift |
| Main Cast |
Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo |
| Supporting Cast |
Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Peter Dinklage, Wanda Sykes, Aziz Ansari, Keke Palmer, Drake, Jennifer Lopez, Heather Morris, Joy Behar, Nicki Minaj, Josh Gad, Alan Tudyk, Nick Frost, Kunal Nayyar, Alain Chabat, JB Smoove, Michael Thurmeier |
| Director |
Steve Martino |
| Screenwriter |
Michael Berg, Jason Fuchs |
| Distributor |
20th Century Fox |
| Trailer |
http://www.iceagemovie.com/
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| Official Site |
http://www.iceagemovie.com/ |
| Rating |
PG |
| Running Time |
94 minutes |
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Talent in red has entry in The Big Picture |
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