The storyline focuses on the breaking of the continents. A Wooly Mammoth named Manny (Ray Romano) gets separated from his wife, Ellie (Queen Latifah), and daughter, Peaches (Keke Palmer), and has to find his way back to them.

“I thought it was really funny,” said audience member Gary Fhund. “It had a good message about family and always being grateful.”

As the fourth installment, “Continental Drift” lacked originality, especially in regards to humor. Though the jokes were made to be funny for children, kids being the core audience, they didn’t help satisfy the parents who were accompanying.

As a way to mark genders, animators put human hair on most of the mammals to help children differentiate. There even seemed to be mammals used in the movie which do not even exist; showing creativity, the filmmakers arranged the villain, Captain Gut, as a prehistoric orangutan called Gigantopithecus.

With messages involving family and friends, there almost seemed to be too many moral lessons in the movie. Alongside these were storylines as well; just about every character had an issue or lesson to be learned, making it difficult to pick up just one and relate.

Some moral lessons were more somber than others. Sid (John Leguizamo) had his own family abandon him not once but twice. It seemed as though it was swept under the rug and not addressed again until the very end, but a really profound lesson didn’t emerge from the side-story.

“I’ve seen all of the “Ice Age” movies with my kids,” Patrick Wild said. “But, this one wasn’t as good as the others. It didn’t seem to have any real feeling.”

“Ice Age: Continental Drift” seems to only have one motivation: to entertain kids. All the messages in the movie that had the potential to be meaningful were just as artificial as the animation.