Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
★½ — Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
By 2016, the Ice Age franchise had been a reliable fixture of family animation for well over a decade. The original film, released by Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox back in 2002, was a genuinely warm and funny piece of work that found an audience well beyond its target demographic. Three sequels followed at broadly regular intervals, each one broadening the scale and the cast, if not always the quality. Ice Age: Collision Course is the fifth entry in the series, arriving four years after the previous film, which Mike Thurmeier also directed. Thurmeier returns here at the helm, making this his second consecutive outing with the franchise, and the results suggest that familiarity has not necessarily bred inspiration.
The premise this time sends Scrat, the franchise's perennially unlucky, acorn-obsessed sabre-toothed squirrel, careening into outer space, where his antics inadvertently trigger an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. That forces Manny, Sid, Diego and the wider herd to abandon their home and trek across unfamiliar terrain in search of somewhere safe. It is, on paper, the sort of concept that could lend a series some fresh energy after years of diminishing returns. Whether it manages that is, of course, the question. The film runs at a fairly brisk 95 minutes and carries the tagline "They're going out with a bang," which, with hindsight, reads as either confident or ominous depending on your patience for franchise fatigue. Blue Sky Studios, operating under the 20th Century Fox Animation banner, had by this point built a reliable if polished but unremarkable reputation for technically competent, commercially minded animated features, and the production values here are not in question.
The core voice cast reassembles without any notable changes. Ray Romano, whose presence has anchored every instalment since the beginning (you can revisit those earlier films via the reviews of the original, its first sequel and the third film), returns as Manny the mammoth, joined again by John Leguizamo as Sid, Denis Leary as Diego, and Queen Latifah as Ellie. Seann William Scott also returns. It is a cast with real comic capability, individually and collectively, and that makes it all the more noticeable when the material does not give them much to work with. Whether they rise to the occasion or whether the script simply does not invite them to is something worth considering as you read on.
At this point, Blue Sky isn’t making movies, they’re just launching Ice Age -branded content into the void and hoping something sticks. This one is a soulless, lazy, and barely connected collection of subplots that feel like they were stitched together with melted Sid drool. The “asteroid apocalypse” angle is the laziest plot device imaginable, and even the core cast feels like they're just going through the motions (and probably were). There’s no heart, no real humour, and zero reason for this to exist beyond milking a once-lovable franchise for a few more bucks. Sad to see a series I once enjoyed fall this hard. This wasn’t a collision course, it was a crash landing .
I came into this one hoping it might at least coast on the goodwill the earlier films had built up, but there really is nothing here to hold onto. When a franchise that once had genuine charm starts feeling like an obligation rather than an event, it shows in every scene, and this one wears that exhaustion openly. If you want a reminder of what these characters were capable of in better hands, honestly, go back to the originals. They hold up far better than this. Sometimes the kindest thing a franchise can do is know when to stop. This one, unfortunately, did not.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2016 | Watched: 2025-07-21
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Disney Plus · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Mike Thurmeier: Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)
More with Ray Romano: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) · Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) · Ice Age (2002) · Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
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