the audience applauded

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

So we made popcorn, huddled together cozily on the couch, and made the awful mistake of popping in this video! We only watched about 5 to 10 minutes of it before giving up and turning it off. Me and a few of my siblings went back to finish it another day, but were still disgusted.Right off the bat there's a bunch of pointless and insulting teenage drama, and insults to parents. Why did Manny and Ellie have to raise a brat? These are ANIMALS! They seem to act more like HUMANS in every film.In the first Ice Age the characters migrated, hunted, and you know, did animal things! Now in this movie you see pirates, ships, and mammoths flipping in the air like acrobats! It's very unbelievable.Scratt forming the continents of the world is VERY CHEAP! Scratt sinking underwater and turning into stringy monster is VERY CHEAP! Things like this aren't funny. This movie is fake compared to the original. It doesn't seem like the same world.I know character development is necessary for a good movie, but that doesn't mean changing their entire personalities! You can hardly recognize them. Where's the lovable Sid? Slink Diego? They no longer exist! Manny even lost his funny mammoth shuffle. Now he gallops around like a horse! Please don't waste your time like I did. It only takes one word to describe this movie "dumb".

Honestly, I was disappointed by Ice Age 4. It is such a shame, as I loved the first few films of this series when I was younger, but now I think it is suffering from franchise fatigue. The jokes aren't funny and the entire film just felt like an exhausted affair. I'm just glad that they still included Scrat. He is by far the best thing in the film. I just love the idea that he is responsible for Pangea breaking apart and for also the sinking of Scratlantis. Also I don't think that the villains were well-realised. I get that this is a kid's film, but the villains seemed like they were right out of a pantomime. They were two-dimensional and not very interesting.Read my full review for more: http://goo.gl/tkl2Nu

Very disappointing. I've watched every single Ice Age movie in the cinemas, known the stories backwards, grew up with these characters. The end to the 3rd movie felt completed, like a brilliant trilogy had come to an end. Why, oh why did they feel the need to make another one? Oh, I forgot, the very reason why most films are made these days - money. This movie is a cheap money grabber with good animation. The story was bland and predictable, brilliantly written characters from previous films are given absolutely no character development, barely any good dialog and not nearly as much screen time as they deserve. Instead we are presented with new characters like: Peaches, Manny and Ellie's daughter who is a 'rebellious teen who no one understands', the guy she has a crush on who gets way more screen time than he should because he's voiced by someone famous, other teen mammoths who...have no names and no personality but are also voiced by famous people! There's also an actual villain. Ugh. One of the best things about the Ice Age movies is how they handled villains. They were never main characters - because the story was about Manny, Diego and Sid - but they were cleverly written with brilliant dialog and interesting motives. In this movie we get : a large, pirate monkey. With no motives besides 'being evil' - and not even being epically evil or maliciously evil, just annoying and stupid - this character has no interesting dialog, has no point besides 'being the bad guy' and overall is a stupid, useless, not thought-out, pathetic excuse for a villain and for a character. The only two new characters out of the many, many, many of them (who are introduced for a scene and then are never seen again) are Peaches rodent friend and J- Lo's tiger. Unfortunately they have so little screen time I can't even remember their names. The story is predictable, boring, filled with waaayyy too many plot holes and a disgrace to the other well thought out, interesting and unique plots the other Ice Age movies had. I keep comparing this movie to the other Ice Age films, but even on its own this movie is terrible. There was NO MORALE TO THE STORY. One of the biggest reasons for children's movies is to teach morales or lessons in unique ways. Though a few minor characters redeem themselves, the main characters learn NOTHING. It's pathetic. They used up every single humorous piece of dialog during the ads, so when you went to watch the movie nothing was funny. I guess that served the purpose though, get audiences to the movies to MAKE MONEY! The new characters are terrible, old characters are forgotten about, story is awful, so what was good about this film? Animation. Yes, the animation was nice. Not as brilliant as, say, Disney or Pixar, but still impressive (especially with all the water scenes). The end credits song is good (though was written to show how many famous people were involved with the cast). Basically this movie is a sorry excuse for an end to a brilliant set of movies. Blue Sky studios, please feel ashamed. You made a movie in which you took some of the most beloved childhood characters and did nothing with them, wrote a bunch of pointless other characters, a stupid story and then MADE A BUNCH OF MONEY!

I'm not exactly sure, if it should be taken into consideration when evaluating this movie that it's already the fourth entry in the series and of course not that fresh and innovative anymore. They certainly made the most of it taken that into consideration. But it's not really that bad that you have to look for excuses or mitigating factors. Ice Age 4 is still a solid film I wouldn't hesitate to show my children. The first half is rather weak and had me occasionally lost interest, but the fact that I never stop watching a film before it actually ends was rewarded here and the second half was actually pretty good, definitely an improvement. The whole continental drift story is pretty forgettable and really only just the frame for the characters and their interactions.We have a muscular scary monkey here as the main antagonist (voiced by "Game of Thrones"-star Peter Dinklage) who leads a gang of pirates. Otherwise pretty much all the characters from the last three films are included and if you loved them there, chances are good you will also enjoy them here. In addition, there's a female saber-toothed tiger with the most predictable, but nonetheless sweet, storyline. Still, it's fun. Scrat is included again as well and while I never was a fan of him at all, I have to admit I enjoyed the part near the end when he gets to "Scratlantis" to the tune of the wonderful "Freude schöner Götterfunken", maybe my favorite inclusion of Scrat in the whole franchise. I'd need to watch the other films again to make a definite decision.The film itself seems to focus on father-daughter issues judging from the beginning, but I personally enjoyed the unusual friendship story involving said daughter and the hedgehog(?) more captivating and moving. It was the highlight of these 90 minutes. Comedy-wise you can't really top a paralyzed Sid (that's what you get for being such a glutton!). The animation is fine as you'd expect it, especially when it comes to the characters. Really it's almost impossible to find a film these days where the animation is amateurish enough to hurt the overall image of a movie. It's all just about different styles and you have to find your own favorite approach. Occasionally it's even fine enough to bring up some really cute scenes, for example all those scenes that involve the hyraces.Directors Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier have worked among other things on the Scrat short films in the past and they've managed to add a worthy fourth film to the series. I watched the first three films a couple years ago and I wouldn't say that this one is inferior to them in quality at all. That's why I'd recommend it, especially to fans of the first three and to children and animation lovers of all ages.