1. Ice Age 4: Continental Drift
Whereas the first part of the Ice Age series told a wholesome story as realistic as a film about a tiger, a sloth and a mammoth teaming up could be and its two sequels seemed happy being middling, child pleasing entries, this year's Continental Drift went from contrived to ridiculous and back again, via a gang of pirates for some reason. In an attempt to make the series closer to the Shrek reference-o-rama rather than the Pixar sentimentality, we have multiple scenes that look like Blue Sky Animation are trying to pull a Family Guy; a hyrax with Braveheart makeup; a vague copy of Gandalfs appearance at Helms Deep from The Two Towers. But unlike Dreamworks' ogre, what Ice Age is doing are not pop culture jokes. Its not even visual gags in the style of Aardmann. Its just a reference to a scene in a much better movie. Mentioning a different movie in a movie is as funny as the Whos There? part of a Knock Knock joke. If theres no punch line, theres no joke. I sat in a screening full of young children and nary a laugh was heard. When your films dont even come close to entertaining your (famously easy to please) target audience, you must be doing something terribly wrong. Ice Age 4 is a sorry excuse for a family film; a putrid, lazy entry in a series that used to have a lightness of touch. The audience is treated with no respect; Sids Grandma is literally just dropped in for no reason and the adventures of Scrat and his acorn don't even elicit a smile. Sadly, the film made nearly $900,000,000 and thus its likely well be seeing another confused mess soon.