Ice Age: Col­li­sion Course

It’s hard to think of how an ani­mat­ed fea­ture could be more insult­ing­ly lazy than Ice Age: Col­li­sion Course. Pro­duc­tion of these things must have reached some kind of sweet eco­nom­ic thresh­old where­by its just not worth break­ing a sweat to build some basic cogency, sim­ple dra­ma, a rea­son for the eyes of the audi­ence to remain open. This film is all but indis­tin­guish­able from its cash-rich fore­bears, chron­i­cling the con­tin­ued mis­ad­ven­tures of a gang of flip-talkin’ fur­ry mam­mals who, this time around, are threat­ened with extinc­tion from a sky-bound fire­ball. And, harsh though it may be, few watch­ing this tired, tired film will not be secret­ly pin­ing for all these crit­ters and all their piss-weak sass to qui­et­ly suc­cumb to death from above so we nev­er have to do this dance again.

Even when it comes to con­ven­tions, the rote option is always deemed best. A cli­mac­tic sing-a-long is fad­ed out after bare­ly a minute, as even the mak­ers clear­ly realise that anoth­er hap­py-clap­py dance mon­tage is no fun for any­one. One the­mat­ic main­stay the film picks up (and which has spread far beyond the Ice Age fran­chise) is a fix­a­tion with fae­cal mat­ter. If char­ac­ters aren’t shit­ting, talk­ing about shit, need­ing to shit, sniff­ing shit or acci­den­tal­ly smear­ing shit into their faces, then rest assured, they will be very soon. Obvi­ous­ly shit is hilar­i­ous, and a good poo gag is the finest thing an artist can do, if he does it prop­er­ly. There’s prob­a­bly more poo ref­er­enced and seen in Ice Age: Col­li­sion Course than there is in John Waters’ Pink Flamin­gos, so one must ask, are we real­ly think­ing of the children?

Whether this film marks a break­through in fae­ces-based screen con­tent intend­ed for a gen­er­al audi­ence is anyone’s guess. Indeed, it’s a tough met­ric to gauge with any kind of pre­ci­sion. One blanch­es at the prospect of the forth­com­ing Emo­ji film, in which one of the cen­tral char­ac­ters is like­ly to be a smil­ing turd. And even in the trail­er for a forth­com­ing Trolls movie, one of the gags sees a troll defe­cate cup­cakes in fear only to then offer them to anoth­er char­ac­ter to eat. The finale of Ice Age: Col­li­sion Course, in which the gang have to fill up a vol­cano crater with mag­net­ic crys­tals so they can be blast­ed into the air and drag the killer mete­or from its course, acts as a giant, eco­log­i­cal metaphor for the diges­tion process.