Movies out today: Just one wacky critter caper

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Fortunately July and August are packed with highly anticipated new movies because right now cinemagoers are enduring another dud weekend. Today there's just one new release, with specific appeal.

Ice Age: Continental Drift:
And Fox keeps churning them out... Screening in 2D and 3D is this fourth entry in the Ice Age animated comedy series. This time our prehistoric heroes, Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano), Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the sabretooth tiger (Denis Leary) are accidentally set adrift on an iceberg. While they try to return to land, they're caught up in various seafaring adventures, including encounters with Sid's long-lost grandmother (Wanda Sykes) and Peter Dinklage's ape pirate and his crew - which includes Jennifer Lopez's slinky feline and Nick Frost's elephant seal. Meanwhile, back on terra firma, Manny's (now) teenage daughter isn't true to herself and her best friend while she tries to fit in with the cool kids.

After a touching first movie, the Ice Age films have slid into formulaic, kid-safe territory, and plumped out their cast with increasingly irritating characters. It's no real surprise then that the well-animated Ice Age 4 is apparently more of the same. The lighthearted, lightweight and cheerfully wholesome mix is likely to leave fans smiling while setting cynics' eyes rolling. This said, at least there's always acorn-obsessed Scrat to deliver the consistently hilarious, scene-stealing goods. Continental Drift only opens in North America on 13 July so there's no aggregated Rotten Tomatoes review score yet.



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