Kidzworld checks out some fave prehistoric critters in “Ice Age: Continental Drift”! Read the movie review now.
By: Lynn Barker
In this 4th installment of the Ice Age films, mammoth Manny, Syd, Diego, Elllie, Peaches and pals are a happy, well-adjusted herd but when massive earthquakes and shifting continents (caused by Scrat chasing his acorn…don’t ask) destroy their ice age homeland, Manny and the gang are separated from Ellie and Peaches. Set adrift on a big iceberg, daddy Manny and the group fight pirates and other perils to reunite with their homies.
Story Goes: Mammoth Peaches is now a teen who wants to sneak out and hang with guys. Daddy Manny is freaking out and grounds her. All this family stuff seems trivial when huge earthquakes rock the area literally dividing the land mass until Manny, Syd, Diego, and Syd’s grandma who just got dumped with him, are on one side and Ellie, Peaches and pals are on another!
Manny and the gang end up on a small iceberg floating out to sea. Manny yells at Ellie to meet him later at a land bridge. He’ll return no matter what! “What” turns out to be various animal pirates floating the seas on another berg. After getting captured by the pirates and escaping at sea, the gang ends up on an island where the surviving bad guys have also landed. Manny and pals recruit the “locals”.. a bunch of very cute chipmunk-like rodents, to help steal the pirates’ new iceberg ship. Eventually, they make it back to Ellie and Peaches and float off toward a new home.
Adrift at sea
Special Features: A ton!
Ice Age: The Story So Far - is a recap of all the movies; how the herd first met, how Ellie and Manny met, the adventure when Peaches was born, etc. and, of course some Scrat background. Really nice especially if you didn’t see all of the films.
Missing Links – This is two Deleted Scenes in crude animation but voiced by the voice cast.. more on Syd being paralyzed when eating forbidden fruit and more on Scrat and his acorn. Cute.
Through a Pirates’ Spyglass – is sort of the “making of” featurette. In “Voices” we see the fun voice cast recording and talking about their characters. Nick Frost as big seal Flynn is really funny as is Rebel Wilson on her character Raz, a prehistoric kangaroo. Kunal Nayar from TV’s “Big Bang Theory” talks about his Indian badger character Gupta, little person Peter Dinklage chats on bad guy character Gutt and Jennifer Lopez is seen briefly recording as tiger Shira. – Lots of fun.
The pirate crew
Capturing the Crew – is about character design and info on making pirate ships out of floating icebergs.. costumes are really all natural animal fur and the animators used real prehistoric animals as references for the pirate cast. We learn that pirate captain Gutt was originally a bear but ended up an orangutan! Interesting.
Granny and the Stink of the Sloths – actor John Leguizamo talks about Syd’s dysfunctional family and we see voice actress Wanda Sykes chat on playing Granny, Syd’s hilarious, toothless grandma. Very fun
Whale of a Tale: Drifts, Rifts, Beasties and Myths – This big featurette gets into the real science of the ice age and Continental Drift. Real scientists let us know that the filmmakers really did base the movie on real science then… went all cartoony with it! This is like a much cooler than usual geology/geography class! Also the look of the giant crabs, the whale, narwhals, etc. are explained. We learn that the story is based on the myth of Greek hero Odysseus from Homer’s “The Odyssey”. Sirens luring sailors to their deaths are from that story and, like Odysseus, Manny just wants to get home!
Scrat Got Your Tongue – is one of my fave extras because Scrat is my man! Love that little critter. He’s popular all over the world and he doesn’t talk. Just makes very funny sounds. We find out that one of the producers has always voiced the Scrat sounds. We see him doing it and it’s funny. Very cute.
The Scratist – is a take-off of the movie The Artist, a black and white trailer for the film with Scrat scenes set to music. Short but fun.
Shimmy Shake Music Section - is multiple music video silly fun as you can sing and dance along with the pirate animals while words to their song scroll at the screen’s bottom. There is a Music Video with the animals singing the family song from the film and another video by New Direction called “Chasing the Sun” that includes the guys standing on CG icebergs. Fans will love it. In another video, Syd teaches you to dance “The Continental Drift” as a flash mob! We see young people all over the world dancing in their own mobs. This is not only fun but really good exercise. I highly recommend it.
Two tech extras are Party with a Pirate – Interactive viewing mode – instead of Commentary by the director you have this feature in which a pirate character comments over the film and, after downloading an App called Pirate Picasso Coloring App, you can click on the screen to download, from i-tunes or Google Play, various cute character pictures to color. They will “hop” onto your other devices. Never seen this before.
Captured by pirates
Wrapping Up – Visually, this might be the best of the Ice Age movies. It’s not as original in story as some of them but it’s a hoot none-the-less. This Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack (includes Digital Copy) is the way to go for extras and, for fans of the characters, it would make an especially good holiday gift. Alone, the movie would get 3 stars but this extras-packed set gets 4.
Ice Age: Continental Drift Blu-ray + DVD:
Ice Age Cover Art
.jpg)
