The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
DISNEY+Beat the horse until it oozes ideas no more. Consuming the big thinkers of Blue Sky Studios and immediately reviving their dying series as a streaming-exclusive spin-off that fails to manage the natural childhood nostalgia on offer is the fault of Disney and Disney alone. From the studio that once brought out Robots and Rio comes the sixth instalment of a series that should’ve died out two films into their reign, like the mammoths that inspired these animal-based adventures. The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild looks like it came out around the same time as the first Ice Age, so credit where it is due, they have captured an animation style that looked poor in 2002.
The dated story feels deliberately simple and uncomfortably cheap, with animation closer to the work of Foodfight in an unfinished state than something Disney are willing to slap their label on. But that is exactly what The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is: a project that Disney have slapped their name to and hoped for the best with. It is no surprise that the Crash (Vincent Tong) and Eddie (Aaron Harris)-led feature is a dud. Two annoying characters supported by Simon Pegg and a noticeably different return for original characters. Ray Romano does not return. That is the best part of The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, knowing that Romano is safe and sound on some other project.
It is when Pegg shows up that the problems escalate for this John C. Donkin feature. Expect less than quality from the man whose recent outputs have been Ready Player One and a small part in America: The Motion Picture. Drab and featureless backgrounds with no animation to them, an ensemble of new characters that will leave no impression as they leap around the screen with no aim or control. The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild would feel more at home as a concept rather than a finished project. There is nothing in here, from the voice acting to the animation, that feels anywhere close to being finished. A stuttering pace doesn’t help, with the opening trying to recap three films worth, giving up when it can’t figure out what was going on in any instalments after that. Audiences gave up far quicker than Donkin, but that is no surprise.
A film that looks as poorly textured as a homebrew video game from the late 1990s, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild are not as wild as some may expect. Barely good enough to entertain the age demographic this feature is hoping to peddle merchandise to, it is a drab and rather sobering outcome of the times cinema finds itself in. Blue Sky Studios are no longer capable of their blue sky thinking under the boot of Mickey Mouse. A tragic shame, not just for the animation studios that persevere, but for those that remember Ice Age. Fun memories of a film that didn’t quite light the world on fire, but stuck with people because the culture of today threw it under the wing of modern memes. The culture of tomorrow will throw The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild under the bus, and rightly so.