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.

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