And I thought Norm of the North was going to be the worst animated film of the year, all the way back in January. I may have jumped the gun on that designation. Rather than following The Land Before Time into the Land of Direct-to-DVD Sales, Ice Age: Collision Course somehow marks the fifth (yes, fifth!) theatrical release in the long-running Ice Age series. But this series is more than a case of diminishing results. It’s a series that’s in dire need of the long-awaited extinction these characters somehow keep avoiding. This time, Manny (Ray Romano) and company have to stop a meteor from destroying Earth. Such a task may hint at some grand sense of scale, but Collision Course is basically a prehistoric, animated take on a sitcom episode, where the impending catastrophe comes alongside sitcom staples like an overprotective father with a mean-spirited dislike of his future son-in-law. It’s incredibly lazy, and its “humor” will fail to provoke laughs from both children and adults. It’s time to bring this series to an end, for the sake of mankind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QywEmtslLFI

Ice Age: Collision Course • Rating: PG (for mild rude humor and some action/peril) • Runtime: 100 minutes • Genre: Animation • Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Lopez, Adam DeVine, Keke Palmer • Directors: Mike Thurmeier, Galen T. Chu • Writers: Michael J. Wilson, Michael Berg, Yoni Brenner • Distributor: 20th Century Fox/Blue Sky