It’s been 20 years since “Ice Age” became a pop-culture hit as an uptight woolly mammoth, a loudmouthed sloth and a sarcastic saber-toothed tiger escorted a human baby home.
Blue Sky Studios’ computer animation was nominated for the second-ever Oscar for Best Animated Feature, a prize that was invented for “Shrek” (2001) but lost to Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese anime masterpiece “Spirited Away.” No one else had a chance.
Now, the sequel spinoff “The Adventures of Buck Wild” drops Friday on Disney+, providing a zany diversion for little kids, while parents might grow bored of the prehistoric chaos.
Set once again in the Paleolithic Ice Age, the romp continues the escapades of possum brothers Crash and Eddie, who set out to find a place of their own. To their surprise, they fall back into the underground Lost World of dinosaurs hidden beneath the ice where they team with adventurous one-eyed weasel Buck Wild to face the evil protoceratops Orson.
Just like its prehistoric predecessor “The Land Before Time,” there have been so many sequels that you might forget where we left off, especially if you only saw the first film or two. Thankfully, an opening sequence draws hieroglyphics to remind us what happened.
“Buck Wild” is predated by five features: “Ice Age” (2002), “Ice Age: The Meltdown” (2006), “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” (2009), “Ice Age: Continental Drift” (2012) and “Ice Age: Collision Course” (2016), as well as two extra holiday specials and seven short films.
This newest installment is notably the first spinoff to be released under the Walt Disney umbrella after the Mouse ate the Fox with Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox in late 2019. “Buck Wild” was already in development at Fox in 2018 long before Disney took over, which might be why the film doesn’t feel much like a Disney production at all.
The journey is wild and wacky for young kids, but adults may start dozing off (guilty as charged). I was much more engaged by the original, which I watched during senior week in Ocean City as I recovered from a massive sunburn in the motel room while my buddies hit the beach. The fact that I can tell you when and where I watched it means it was great.
Sadly, elder millennials who grew up with “Ice Age” won’t recognize much here. All of our favorite voices are gone. Ray Romano no longer voices Manny; John Leguizamo no longer voices Sid; Denis Leary no longer voices Diego; Queen Latifah no longer voices Ellie, and the comic-relief duo of Seann William Scott and Josh Peck no longer voice Crash & Eddie.
Instead, we get a whole new cast: Sean Kenin as Manny, Jake Green as Sid, Skyler Stone as Diego, Dominique Jennings as Ellie, and the duo of Vincent Tong and Aaron Harris as Crash and Eddie. It’s not like we expect Jack Black, Alan Tudyk or Cedric the Entertainer — they’ve skipped every sequel — but it’d be nice to at least hear a few familiar voices.
It would be like making a “Toy Story” sequel without Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, or a “Shrek” sequel without Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. We might enjoy the specific brand of animation, but the soul is missing in an intangible way that viewers feel in their guts.
To further that analogy, “Buck Wild” attempts to be like “Puss in Boots” (2011), a spinoff of Antonio Banderas’ beloved character from “Shrek 2” (2004). The difference is that DreamWorks didn’t recast Shrek, Donkey and Fiona with different voices; they wrote a completely different story with completely different characters around Banderas.
Here, the lone holdover is Simon Pegg as the titular Buck Wild, who first appeared in the third installment. Wearing a green leaf as an eyepatch and riding tamed pterodactyls, he’s a swashbuckling hero reminiscent of Jake in “The Rescuers Down Under” (1990), which genuinely remains one of the most underrated films of the entire Disney Renaissance.
The most interesting character is the villain, Orson (Utkarsh Ambudkar), whose big brain bulges behind his long triceratops forehead with a Napoleon complex as the runt of the litter. While Shere Khan was scared of fire in “The Jungle Book” (1967), Orson uses it to his advantage to manipulate minions of raptors that seem hypnotized by the flames.
It’s the most inspired touch by screenwriters Ray DeLaurentis, Jim Hecht and William Schifrin in a script that otherwise recycles the Lost World concept from Part 3. The first act leads us to believe that we’ll hang out with our favorite characters Manny, Sid and Diego, but they’re quickly abandoned and left on the peripheral of the story until the end.
Instead, director John C. Donkin, who produced the original “Ice Age,” pushes all of his Chips (and Dales) on the two possums Crash and Eddie, who were introduced in Part 2. They now enjoy some carefree “Hakuna Matata” freedom before crashing back into the Lost World. Rarely do they drive the action, often accidental tourists in a dino land.
The yakking critters oddly aren’t as funny as the speechless squirrel Scrat, who didn’t say a word as he desperately tried to find a place to bury his beloved acorn. “Buck Wild” could have used more Scrat, who was “voiced” by the original director Chris Wedge but was last seen in the pre-pandemic video game “Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure” (2019).
After a while, the breakneck pace gets tiresome. At one point, a furry character says, “We’re making it up as we go along,” and that’s what this movie feels like.
A harsh critic might spit a snarky line (“This slapdash franchise is better left on ice”), but let’s face it — there’s a place for every kind of movie, depending on your goal as parents.
If you’ve got really little kids, they’ll giggle at the slapstick humor. Turn on Disney+ in the other room while you do the dishes or fold the laundry. There’s no need for you as a parent to sit down in front of the TV, unless you want to catch a quick nap on the couch.
Family movie time is better spent with “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “The Mitchells vs. The Machines,” “Luca,” “Vivo” or “Encanto,” a truly revolutionary work that deals with deep family themes via a Lin-Manuel Miranda songbook that’s taking the world by storm.
Everyone is talking about Bruno, but no one will be talking about the newest “Ice Age.” It faces too much “surface pressure” by leaving its beloved characters above ground.
Under the surface, it feels as “berserk as a tightrope walker in a three-ring circus.”
