Ice Age: Collision Course

image for Ice Age: Collision Course

Short takes

Parental guidance under 6 (scary scenes and themes)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Ice Age: Collision Course
  • a review of Ice Age: Collision Course completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 27 June 2016.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 6 Parental guidance recommended due to scary scenes and themes.
Children aged 6 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Ice Age: Collision Course
Classification: G
Consumer advice lines: Very mild themes and coarse language
Length: 94 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

Ice Age: Collision Course, an animated adventure film, is the fifth instalment of the Ice Age movie series. The film begins as Scrat (Chris Wedge) attempts to chase an acorn he discovers. He is eventually catapulted outside Earth, where he unintentionally sets in motion a dangerous series of events that threaten to destroy the entire planet. There is an asteroid catapulting towards earth, and the team of friends, including Manny (Ray Romano), Ellie (Queen Latifah), Sid (John Leguizamo), Diego (Denis Leary), and Buck (Simon Pegg), are forced to figure out how to stop it. Buck ultimately comes up with a plan that involves journeying to the valley where the meteors have been landing and creating a magnetic space that may potentially divert the impending asteroid.

In addition to the central plot, the movie involves individual sub-plots related to several of the main characters. Optimistic Sid is still on a quest to find his one true love, whilst Manny is a parent struggling with his daughter growing up and getting married.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Potential world destruction; Space and astronomy: Adventure and exploration; Friendship and relationships

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

None of concern

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

  • Several characters are slightly injured when meteorites land near them – they appear to be zapped by electricity when they touch the debris, which causes their fur to stand up on end before they fly away into the distance.
  • One character is exposed to radiation which causes his skin to peel back and show his skeleton. This is presented in a highly comedic manner, however.
  • Several characters are forced to run inside a cave in order to escape from a very hot, lava-covered boulder which is rolling towards them.

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

  • Younger children in this age group may also be scared by the above-mentioned scenes

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

  • Nothing further noted.

Product placement

  • Nothing noted in the movie, but plenty of associated merchandise being marketed to children.

Sexual references

There are mild sexual references, including:

  • There are references to online dating, in regards to a female character telling a male that he “looks nothing like (his) profile picture”. In this scene, the male character intends to propose – however, the female suggests the two of them break up.

Nudity and sexual activity

  • None noted.

Use of substances

  • None noted.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language that children might imitate, including:

  • crap, dang, dumb.

In a nutshell

Ice Age: Collision Course, the 5th film in the Ice Age series, is a light-hearted family film that centres on an unlikely group of individuals tasked with saving the world. It is likely to be popular with fans of the previous films and to attract some new young viewers. Parental guidance is recommended for children under 6 due to some scary scenes and themes.

With impending disaster in the form of an asteroid rocketing towards Earth, the movie’s plot highlights the importance of being able to work together as a team in order to achieve common goals. It centres on the supportive nature of friendships, and the positive outcomes of having people around who can be relied upon during times of stress or crisis. The movie also presents the characters as individuals who do not always take life, or themselves, too seriously – despite facing danger and life-threatening events.