Scrat’s back and he’s still desperately trying to hang on to his acorn. However in Collision Course, the fifth in the animated Ice Age franchise, Scrat’s pursuit of the acorn takes him into an abandoned spaceship and bouncing around in a galaxy far, far away. His chaotic and unschooled navigation of the spaceship sets off a chain of accidents that result in a number of gigantic asteroids hurtling towards Earth.
Back in the idyllic Paleolithic ice age, Manny (Ray Romano) is struggling to come to terms with sharing his daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) with her fiancé Julian (Adam Devine). Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) is still searching for a life partner; sabre tooth tigers Diego (Denis Leary) and Shira (Jennifer Lopez) are contemplating starting a family; the opossums Crash and Eddie are still fooling around. Their gentle lives are rattled when they narrowly escape a few asteroids that hit the ground near them.
Just then Buck (Simon Pegg), the one-eyed weasel shows up with an ancient tablet that foretells the end of the world by asteroid. This group must now apply their collective wit and might to change the course of the asteroid and save the planet from certain doom.
Random characters start popping up to bolster a thin storyline (written by Michael J Wilson, Michael Berg and Yoni Brenner), among them a Zen yogi called Shangri Llama, head of Geotopia. Fourteen years after its first outing, this latest in the long-running franchise, directed by Mike Thurmeier and Galen T Chu, is a little too shrill and boring in parts. Even the gallery of talented voice actors sounds fatigued. While the animation is topnotch, and there’s enough for young audiences, the accompanying adults them might find this course a slog.