Of course, it’s unlikely that one bad movie would sound the death knell for a two-decades-spanning franchise – especially one as lucrative as Ice Age – but Disney has a history of producing poorly-received sequels to animated classics.Īladdin: The Return of Jafar, for instance, sapped audience interest in any future instalments featuring the once-beloved cast of characters from the 1992 original movie.

Tellingly, the new movie is also the first in the Ice Age franchise to have been made without the involvement of Blue Sky Studios, hence its unfamiliar (and evidently unpopular) animation style.

So, despite the re-appearance of beloved characters Manny, Sid and Diego, there’s no sign of voice actors John Leguizamo, Ray Romano or Dennis Leary in The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild – Simon Pegg is the only returnee, as the titular weasel. Granted, none of the franchise’s recent entries have been particularly well-received, but they did all at least feature the same consistently brilliant voice cast that made the original Ice Age movie so popular. The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is the sixth feature-length Ice Age film after Ice Age (2002), Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) and Ice Age: Collision Course (2016). This is a franchise that looks like it's slowly going the way of the dinos.” Similarly unimpressed, the Associated Press’ Mark Kennedy said of the movie: “Visually and storytelling-wise it's not a cut above much of what kids can watch on TV these days. “While I know I'm not the target audience, I still shouldn't have loathed every second I spent watching The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild,” MovieFreak’s Sara Michelle Fetters wrote. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has just a 17% critics rating, with many commentators taking aim at its lackluster storytelling, poor voice work and cheap-looking animation.

The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild hasn’t fared any better with critics, either. “ didn’t even get through to the 30-minute stage, just awful,” and “wrong voices, wrong animation, boring story,” were among the other scathing criticisms.

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