The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild: Movie Review

Vocal cast: Simon Pegg, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Vincent Tong, Aaron Harris
Director: John C Donkin

As soulless a cash-in as could ever be imagined, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is a case of a film too far for the beloved Ice Age series.

When possum brothers Crash and Eddie (Tong and Harris) decide they've had enough of hanging with the pack of Manny, Ellie, Sid and Diego, they head back to the world below and re-encounter the ever zany Buck (Pegg, the only returning vocal member of the franchise).

But rather than living a care-free existence below, Buck's got problems of his own with megalomaniac dinosaur Orson (Ambudkar) determined to overthrow the peaceful existence of the creatures that live in harmony at a nearby watering hole.

The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild wants to riff on superhero films, and promote a message of family being important, but what it actually manages to do is to creatively strip the Ice Age series of any kind of decency while ploughing on regardless.

It helps little that Buck is sidelined in his own spinoff in favour of Crash and Eddie, who are beyond irritating to endure, and who are no match for Scrat and his beloved acorn antics.

That's the half the issue with The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild - it spends too much time making you realise how much you miss the original cast and the genial tone of the first series of films. None of the main actors return to their parts, and there are a few zany one liners from Buck but it's not enough to even make the 80 minutes fly by.

There's little new in The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild - it's a film that is the very definition of straight to streaming and shows that even creatively, after mining a prehistoric series for as much endeavour as it can, the franchise is in danger of going extinct if it churns out such low quality fare as this.

The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is screening on Disney+ from March 25.