Having really enjoyed the first two 'Ice Age' films, the other three films in the franchise weren't as good. 'Dawn of the Dinosaurs' was still entertaining though, but while 'Continental Drift' had its great things (like Captain Gutt) it did feel like a sequel too far.

If one thought that 'Continental Drift' was a sequel too far, while there are still good things here 'Collision Course' does feel like the writers were trying to keep things afloat by putting in as much mileage and material as possible but it all feels like a try-too-hard effort. 'Collision Course' is not a terrible film but this reviewer found it a huge disappointment.

The best thing about 'Collision Course' is the animation, which is fantastic and the one thing that has improved greatly over-time. For me, especially in the space scenes with Scrat and with Buck it is the best-looking film in the franchise, there is so much eye-popping detail, the characters move easily and look more refined and one really cannot get enough of the vibrant, rich colours. The soundtrack is catchy, upbeat and whimsical, with an inspired riff on Figaro with Buck's playful re-introduction.

While the laughs do not come consistently, there are definitely moments and they come from Scrat (especially the opening scene, which is the funniest scene in the film),who's had more inspired material but the facial expressions, physical comedy and the visuals in general help stop making Scrat too much of a tiresome one-joke character, and with Buck when re-introduced. The voice acting is still very good, the most enthusiastic coming from Simon Pegg. Scrat and Buck, making a welcome return, are scene-stealing characters, Diego is fun enough if not as showy or with as much to do and Ellie provides some sincerity and heart, her scene with Manny providing a rare note of realism to the film.

However, 'Collision Course' suffers from being over-stuffed, over-complicated and bloated. Not just the story, which is pretty all-over-the-place, with too much that is rushed and like too much is going on with potentially great plot strands not being developed enough or given short shrift. The whole Manny trying to come to terms with his daughter planning to move away is completely lost amidst everything else and that could have brought some heart to the film, Sid's romance is rushed and painfully contrived and really there was really no need for the antagonists.

But also the characters, it does feel like there are too many in the film, with too many of them also having barely any screen time, and the only really interesting ones are Buck, Scrat and Ellie. Diego isn't in it enough though does just fine when he's there and is still a lot of fun, and Manny is pretty dull. Sid is very annoying this time round, and as said the antagonists felt thrown in for the sake of "needing" obligatory" antagonists and were underwritten, non-threatening, barely interesting and basically completely unnecessary with their motivations dealt with in a very generic and self-aware way. The script has some witty moments, but is too hit-and-miss and stop-start, the laughs coming too far and between and the best moments don't come to the level of the franchise's very best moments.

All in all, disappointing and definitely feels even more of a sequel too far than 'Continental Drift'. The animation is fantastic and there are definitely some good moments, but the tiredness of the material and the story bloating hurts it quite severely. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Scrat's hunt for the acorn leads him into a spaceship buried in the ice. He accidentally flies into space and sets asteroids on a collision course with earth. Back on the ground, Peaches and Julian want to get married. It's Manny and Ellie's anniversary when some of the asteroids start crashing onto the ground. Buck the weasel explains a prophecy set in stone about an asteroid destroying the world. The gang sets off to stop the forewarn catastrophe opposed by a family of dino-birds.

The Ice Age franchise has always played fast and loose with facts and reality. This goes way too far and makes less sense than anything from before. It is sound and fury signifying nothing. The story rambles on and on. The squirrel is still the funniest part of the movie. If they want to go into space, why not have aliens take the whole gang and have some fun with that. This is a lot of unfunny non-sense. It's only saving grace may be its brightly-colored wackiness which may delight the youngest crowd. The story is too much of a mess for anybody with a developed brain.

Next year, the "Ice Age" franchise will have its 15th anniversary and this year we get the fifth full feature installment to the successful series. Many issues have been dealt with, many new characters have entered the picture, so it was finally time to talk about a subject that was actually defining many, many centuries ago: the extinction of animals. They took the path of the meteoroid explanation for this movie. On the one hand, you could say it is fitting because it is such an important subject, on the other you could say it is fairly uncreative that they have to go for the obvious, maybe due to the lack of new ideas. This is especially disappointing as no less than four writers and two directors worked on this movie. You could really expect a better script by such a high number of people, but it seems that what they came up with for these 95 minutes here is an example of too many cooks spoiling the broth. The voice actors are mostly the same names that you know from the previous films and new additions include Jesse Tyler Ferguson ("Modern Family") and Nick Offerman ("Parks and Recreation") for example.

If you don't think the franchise has jumped the shark with the previous film already, then you may think so after watching this fifth. I did not enjoy it. Of course, the meteoroid story could have been so much better because it was such a defining event, but even aside from that core plot idea, it is extremely underwhelming. The mammoth story line is one that, with the father-daughter relationship, never becomes as touching or relevant as it attempts to be. The Sid scenes are never really that funny with his search for a wife. The saber tooth scenes feel completely irrelevant and their arguments about getting a child feels thrown in so randomly only to fill some more screen time. The only character who made me smile occasionally was Sid's grandmother and the worst is the ending indicates that she will not be back for a 6th movie, which means that one could be even more boring and less interesting. Buck is better than most of the rest in here, but also not good enough to make up for all the flaws. I never found Scrat funny, but this is just personal perception. Maybe his fans can appreciate his scenes.

One of the biggest problems here was that I felt the characters never really interacted with each other. For example the male saber tooth only talks to the female and there are basically no scenes when these two interact with the mammoths which goes really against the idea of how they showed us their strong friendship in previous films. Or for example the four mammoths, after the introduction, are in no conversations with other characters really. Everybody was for themselves and all this despite them being on a huge journey together. Every character had their own story and it shut out most of the others completely. Apart from that, I struggled with the antagonists, creatures that were birds with a touch of dragon who wanted to keep our heroes from preventing the apocalypse (due to the strangest theory, are children really stupid enough to believe it?). They were fairly uninteresting and the monkey from film four made up for some flaws with the story four years ago, but here even the antagonists kinda suck. The plot holes that scientists may see in the idea how Buck and the gang want to save everybody are not a problem at all. Unrealistic occurrences are not a problem in animated movies. I do not expect a scientific documentary. But I do expect to get entertained and that they manage to put a smile on my lips on more than two or three occasions. This film did not succeed from that perspective. I cannot recommend the watch and I hope if they ever make another, then that one will be improved once again. It seems like a real challenge though.