Ice Age 4: Continental Drift 3D 2012

Instead, the gang of walking talking mammalian chums prove as reliably consistent as ever, their ranks bolstered by a few new characters to freshen things up a little and provide the requisite celebrity voiceovers – Jennifer Lopez, Drake, Nicki Minaj and Aziz Ansari in the mix. Not that most of these newbies make their presence particularly felt, with the exception of Peter Dinklage (TV’s Game of Thrones) who steals the show with a nicely over-the-top vocal performance as the similarly OTT-looking ape pirate Captain Gutt.

In further not-a-surprise news the plot of Ice Age 4 is pretty basic, with the aforementioned pirate and his cohorts showing up halfway through the film when core characters Manny the mammoth, Diego the sabretooth and Sid the sloth find themselves adrift on the ocean. They’re trying to return home, with Manny’s need to be reunited with his missus and daughter providing the motivation, and there’s also a father vs teenage daughter subplot going on which hints a little at the parental dynamics of Brave but without the depth, and in much more traditional male-dominated fashion.

This is solid family fare though, will work for parents and kids alike, and as always the animation looks great on the big screen (and in 3D). Plus, the short that precedes it featuring Maggie from The Simpsons is a real treat. Hide