The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
January 28th, 2022
MOVIE: THE ICE AGE ADVENTURES OF BUCK WILD
STARRING: SIMON PEGG, UTKARSH AMBUDKAR, VINCENT TONG, AARON HARRIS
DIRECTED BY: JOHN C. DONKIN
AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: 1 STAR (Out of 4)
The more I watch animated movies with my son, the more I realize the biggest tragedy is when the movie isn’t good. Not just because it’s painful for me, but because to a 3-year old, he’s seeing something that could be his newest thing, and if he’s not into it, well that’s an even worse sign. In light of that, I give you The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, the 6th installment into the Ice Age franchise, the first to go direct to streaming on Disney+, and undoubtedly the worst yet. Although the word Adventure is in the title, there’s little to enjoy in this mundane, and easily forgettable trip back to the Ice Age.
The plot itself feels like a created time waster. The screenplay written by Ray DeLaurentis, Jim Hecht, and William Schifrin involves the two possums, Crash (voiced by Vincent Tong) and Eddie (Aaron Harris), both still obnoxious, but this time venturing on their own. They end up back at the lost world, where they meet up with one-eyed weasel Buck (voiced by Simon Pegg), and find themselves fighting against an angry triceratops named Orson (Utkarsh Ambudkar). We’re introduced to a new character named Zee (voiced by Justina Machado), a skunk with survival skills and a killer defensive spray, and as a group they must take on Orson and his army of velociraptors to keep peace in the lost world.
Right away there are a collection of issues before this Ice Age movie starts. None of the original voice actors have returned, not Ray Romano as Manny the mammoth, John Leguizamo as Sid the sloth, or Denis Leary as Diego the saber tooth tiger. Then you have this one being direct to Disney+ with no intention of being in theaters- and then you have a series that should have quit three movies ago. The task is up to director John C. Donkin, who undoubtedly is trying his best, but still delivering a movie that has little to offer in every facet. It’s not funny, with most jokes involving the two possums saying idiotic things, or playing dead at inopportune moments. Many of the shortcomings arrive at the fact that the characters themselves are not funny to begin with.
On top of all those other issues, the animation is relatively standard, which retroactively makes the work of Hotel Transylvania: Transformania look like Miyazaki. There’s also not much to differentiate this Ice Age movie from the rest, but what is noticeably missing is an appearance from that acorn sniffing character Scrat, and with his omission, one might assume even the animated rodent saw the writing on the wall with this one.
The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild sadly might not even be the last Ice Age movie- on Wikipedia it lists a 7th in production- but if direct to streaming is where the majority of these movies are going then we might expect none of them to get any better. If there ever was a sign that an animated movie didn’t succeed at what it wanted to do, my son had forgotten the movie we watched before he went to bed. This Ice Age, sadly, does not Buck the trend.
THE ICE AGE ADVENTURES OF BUCK WILD IS STREAMING ON DISNEY+ JANUARY 28TH, 2022
1 STAR
Written by: Leo Brady
leo@amovieguy.com
