Ice Age 4: Continental Drift

What’s it about?

Manny and Ellie’s daughter Peaches is now a teenager and wanting to break the rules and go off to be with Ethan, the heartthrob mammoth.  Sid also has his problems as his old granny has come to live with him. Scrat, though, causes the most trouble, when in his never-ending hunt for acorns he accidentally cracks the earth’s core splitting the single continent into several pieces.

Manny, Sid and Diego find themselves on an ice-berg drifting out to sea and separated from Ellie and Peaches. The friends desperately try to get back to their family but are attacked by a band of pirates, led by Captain Gutt, a baboon and mythical ‘sirens’ who only want to cause them harm.

What to look out for

Quite a lot of fighting and battles between Manny, his friends and the Pirate crew as well as comic violence in this movie such as:

• A squirrel is stretched like a rubber band and then flung up into the sky before falling back to earth and crashing face first into the ground.
• Throughout the film, Sid’s granny repeatedly hits characters over the head with her walking stick.

• Manny drags a paralysed Sid along the ground by his feet and then uses him as a bat to hit attacking birds out of the air.
• Captain Gutt holds a knife at Peaches’ throat while Gutt’s pirate crew surround Manny and his friends.

There are also some scary scenes, particularly in 3D, which might frighten younger kids such as:

• The shifting of the earth’s plates results in earthquakes, landslides, falling mountains of ice and moving mountain ranges that continuously chase and threaten to overrun the escaping animals.
• Captain Gutt has a mouth full of large sharp teeth which he displays in a threatening manner. Gutt frightens, threatens and bullies his victims as well as his crew.
• The Sirens are quite scary looking mythical creatures  – they change shape to pretend they are friendly but then change into frightening creatures with fish heads and sharp teeth.

Moral of the Story

The message of the story is that your family, which isn’t always the one you are born with, are those who protect and love you.