The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild: Dino slight

The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, and needlessly, for action and mild language

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.28.22

Madcap humor notwithstanding, the Ice Age series has been noteworthy for each film’s warm emphasis on family: a focus that I’m certain has maintained the franchise’s popularity.

 

Danger-addicted possums Crash and Eddie, left, return to the Lost World and renew
their acquaintance with one-eyed weasel Buck, while sparking a new friendship with
an impressively resourceful zorilla named Zee.

Humor always flows best from well-developed characters, and it was easy to fall in love with an unusual family unit originally comprising cynical woolly mammoth Manny, reformed sabre-toothed tiger Diego, and goofy, good-natured sloth Sid: each either abandoned by his own kind, or believing himself the last of his kind.

Over time, Manny lucked into meeting orphaned female woolly mammoth Ellie, who initially believed herself to be a possum, having been raised alongside possum “brothers” Crash and Eddie.

 

Sidebar hilarity — essentially mini-cartoons occasionally interrupting the core story — was provided by Scrat, a sabre-toothed squirrel forever on the pursuit of acorns (always with catastrophic results).

 

Despite the constant bickering between various members of this unlikely group, we never doubted their mutual devotion: repeatedly proved, over the course of subsequent adventures.

 

This newest entry, sixth in the series, messes with the formula. As can be assumed from the title, the focus is on Crash, Eddie and notably Buck, the sanity-challenged, one-eyed weasel introduced in 2009’s Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Manny, Ellie and the others are sidelined.

 

The result — in the hands of director John C. Donkin and writers Jim Hecht, Will Schifrin and Ray Delaurentis — is an entertaining, adventure-laden romp, but the inter-personal warmth is lacking. 

 

There’s also no sign of Scrat, which is absolutely unacceptable. An Ice Age film without Scrat is like a Despicable Me entry without Minions.

 

This difference in tone and approach, and particularly the absence of heart, can be explained by missing-in-action producer/director Chris Wedge, and the fact that the marvelous animation studio he co-founded — Blue Sky Studios, which created all the previous Ice Age films — was shut down in April 2021, following its 2019 acquisition by Disney. 

 

Ergo, this new film — for better or worse — is an Ice Age entry as “adjusted” by Disney. Fans familiar with the Blue Sky “look” will immediately notice that the animation here isn’t nearly as lush. 

Ice Age: Collision Course — Thawed too soon

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

In theory, a 94-minute animated feature paced with the manic intensity of a 7-minute Warner Bros. cartoon must’ve seemed like a great idea.

In practice ... not so much.

The gang's all here: clockwise from left, Julian, Peaches, Ellie, Manny, Shira, Diego,
Granny, Sid, Crash and Eddie. As for what they're all staring at ... well, that would be
giving away too much!

This fifth (!) entry in the popular Ice Age series is relentless: a never-ending succession of hyper-paced slapstick, sight gags and one-liners, all of which overwhelm the gentle family-unity message that struggles to be heard amid the chaos. Watching this film rapidly becomes an endurance test, after which one is utterly overwhelmed and exhausted.

Additionally, the four credited writers — Aubrey Solomon, Michael J. Wilson, Michael Berg and Yoni Brenner — have augmented the already enormous ensemble cast with a wealth of new characters. The result is total overload, to the detriment of several regular players, most notably Diego, the sabertooth voiced by Denis Leary. He contributes absolutely nothing to the narrative, and his recently acquired gal pal Shira (Jennifer Lopez) fares even worse.

It’s all too much. As the third act introduced yet another set of blissed-out newcomers, shepherded by the fortune cookie-tongued Shangri Llama (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), Constant Companion and I glanced at each other and mouthed, Seriously?

If all concerned — co-directors Galen T. Chu and Mike Thurmeier, and the aforementioned writers — are looking to kill this once-charming franchise, I can think of no better way. The tenderness and wit have been lost.

Everybody involved with 2002’s original Ice Age understood the importance of balance. The bulk of the story was fairly serious — disparate prehistoric creatures banding together for the common good — with the occasional silly one-liners limited to the slovenly Sid, the sloth (John Leguizamo). Machine-gun slapstick was the sole province of the frantic, twitchy Scrat, whose rodent quest for precious acorns served as brief madcap “bumpers” between the core story’s various acts.

This fifth entry is nothing but madcap bumpers. It’s soulless.

Ice Age: Continental Drift — Warm, witty and quite amusing

Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG, for action peril and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.13.12

Chris Wedge deserves a great deal of credit.

During the decade since he co-directed Ice Age, back in 2002 , the series has generated three sequels, each of which has been as fresh, funny and visually enchanting as the first film.

Manny, right, watches in horror as he drifts farther away from his
family, with no hope of rejoining them. Diego, left, shares his large
friend's concern; even the usually frivolous Sid understands the
gravity of their situation. Sooner or later, their ice floe will start
to melt...

DreamWorks’ Shrek series (as one other example) hasn’t been nearly as consistent, with the same number of installments; Wedge, his Blue Sky Studios colleagues and their “sub-zero heroes” have scored runs with every turn at bat.

In no small measure, this is because Wedge and his rotating teams of scripters understand the importance of story. Each new film doesn’t feel like a box office-driven remake of the same basic plot elements, as often happens with lesser sequels; the “Ice Age” entries build on each other, forming distinct chapters of a much broader narrative whose limits have yet to be reached.

Plus, Blue Sky’s films are funny. Very funny.

And more than a little subversive.

Way back in the day, Disney’s animated features and cartoon shorts were acclaimed for their lush, painterly animation; backdrops and characters were beautiful, gentle and well-rounded, like a live-action sequence shot with a soft-focus lens. Disney animated scripts, as well, were gentle and family-friendly.

Warner Bros. cartoon shorts, in marked contrast, relied more on jagged lines and harsh angles, which contributed to a more daring tone that complemented the equally edgy and snarky scripts. You’d never find a cross-dressing character in a Disney cartoon, but if it suited a gag to have Bugs Bunny in drag, then the carrot-chomping rabbit would don a dress.

I view the stylistic difference between Pixar and Blue Sky in somewhat the same light. Both companies recognize the all-important blend of strong scripting and eye-pleasing visuals, but approach this recipe with different attitudes. Pixar films, like classic Disney films, are gorgeous to the point of looking frameable, with storylines that are similarly mainstream.

Blue Sky, alternatively, often relies on the same sort of exaggerated sight gags that Warner Bros. employed every time Wile E. Coyote got trapped by one of his own roadrunner-catching gadgets. The best and funniest ongoing example: the many torments and body-disfiguring catastrophes endured by poor Scrat, in his endless search for the next best acorn.