With each passing entry in the Ice Age franchise (this is number five), the gap between the anarchic joy of the brief bits featuring Scrat the Squirrel and the plodding, on-the-trunk bulk of the film starring Manny the Mammoth & Family & Friends grows wider. (The image of a world-splitting fissure caused by the planting of a single acorn comes to mind, for some reason.) This time, Scrat is in space, having activated an icebound flying saucer, and the violence visited upon him by artificial gravity, teleportation, et.al. very nearly evokes the glory days of Wile E. Coyote. While he’s up there, he accidentally sends a doomsday meteor hurtling toward earth, and Manny & Co. set out to stop it. But all the while, Dad is fretting over his darling daughter’s impending nuptials to a good-hearted goofball. There’s a moment of interest in a weasel’s paean of self-praise set to Figaro’s aria from The Barber of Seville, and grownups can pass the time puzzling over the various random anachronisms (“You look nothing like your profile picture!”) until Scrat shows up again. (2016) — Matthew Lickona
This movie is not currently in theaters.