So I hope it's all over now, because Ice Age 4 is starting to boil over. The first episode, which was many, many years ago, showed us the story of a sloth, a tiger and a mammoth who managed to bring entire families to the cinema with the help of a little squirrel. It was only because of a little squirrel that they managed to go from mediocre to cult.
Compared to Madagascar, which changed its style with the last installment, Ice Age repeats all the negatives that are standard in sequels, which is really hard not to imitate. For the vast majority of sequels, the other parts fail. They fail to continue the trend they set. This failed not only with Ice Age, but also with The Matrix and other franchises where a successful 1st movie is followed by a second or even another installment that doesn't bring people to the theaters. There might be exceptions, but there aren't many. There are exceptions. A recent example is Batman and his Dark Knight, then Indiana Jones, which has gone on to a 4th installment. What is and was evident in all of these works that had successful sequels when they premiered is that the original creators created the sequels and still enjoyed them and that the directors, and of course the writers, were able to build on the success with their creative approach. A good sequel is not about getting the sequel out as soon as possible, but about the creators taking the time to iron out any kinks that would have meant failure. But then again, if you take some films that were made at the same time, there is an art to making a successful franchise. Indeed, it was with great disbelief and unexpected success that The Lord of the Rings was made, and it did what no film had done before. To make 3 episodes of a film in a two-year period and get better every year.
Unfortunately, maybe even fortunately, you can't make animated films all at once. Each animation studio takes over a year to prepare each film for theatrical release, so they just have to wait. So after ten years comes Ice Age 4, with the main characters still being a sloth, a tiger and a mammoth. Over the course of a few episodes, the mammoth and their young lady have joined them, but it's still an Ice Age story where the story of the most important characters come together. So in episode 4 we retrace the story of the famous trio, complete with short episodes of the most famous character in the film. Unfortunately, the most famous "Sabertooth" is given little space compared to the previous installments, her journey to find the peanut, her dream grail, is quite short and she only appears in maybe 3 short scenes during the film, thus failing to push the grey average of the film to higher levels. In the previous installment she had a story where she met her chosen one, but in this installment really her episode is short. The story of the tiger, mammoth, and sloth is unfortunately not that engaging because we don't worry about them at all, it's always clear that with slight hints in the story, they'll get where they want to go. Not only is the whale's help expected, but of course the help of what I call the "gophers" is also expected, also using them very much for good deeds.
Unfortunately, the whole of Ice Age 4 is a weak offshoot of the first episode, which was groundbreaking. Compared to the first episode, the story was very poor. To prolong the film, there are a few sidetracks invented that I didn't understand at all. The first digression is a "love" story about the friendship of the mammoth's daughter, then the second is the awkward story of the arrival of the sloth's family, who left the sloth Sid with his grandmother, who, as an uninteresting character, enabled the final rescue by a screenwriting twist. ¨
The last paragraph will hopefully be about the fact that I didn't like the film at all. Compared to Madagascar 3, which the filmmakers changed to a cool style from scratch, Ice Age 4 just keeps getting worse and worse. I would have been quite happy if it didn't continue with a 5th installment, but who knows, at the moment this animated comedy is very successful in America.
Original release of this article July 17, 2012 – Kritiky.cz
