It's not that I've actively avoided the last installment of the Ice Age franchise. I just really didn't think there was anywhere else to go with it. I have to say, though, this is probably my favorite yet.Scrat the squirrel-thing is still desperately trying to hold on to his acorn and accidentally causes a cascading chain reaction of tectonic shifts which affects the land mass where all the characters from the first three movies live. Manny (Ray Romano) the mammoth, Sid (John Leguizamo) the sloth, his granny (Wanda Sykes), and Diego (Denis Leary) the sabertooth end up on an ice floe caught in a current, while Manny's wife Ellie (Queen Latifah) and daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) are trapped on land that is being crushed under the weight of a sliding mountain range. Before they are separated, they plan to meet at a land bridge to safety.
Manny and the boys drift until they are targeted by a motley crew of pirates, led by Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage), an ape, and his first mate Shira (Jennifer Lopez) a sabertooth. Gutt intends to press-gang the heroes into his service but they escape by capsizing his iceberg. Shira is separated from her villainous crew and taken prisoner/rescued by the heroes. Gutt swears revenge.
There were several elements of The Odyssey that were put to good use here, from the lotus berry that paralyzes Sid to the Sirens that try to lure them to their deaths. The voice cast is incredibly impressive and the animation is very well done. According to IMDb, Ice Age 5 is in production for a 2016 release but those have a habit of shifting around. I normally don't push for a cavalcade of sequels but if they're all as well done as this one, I'm okay.
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