![]() ![]() Do we really need Aziz Ansari from Parks and Recreation to pop up for a couple of lines as a prissy mouse? Or Jennifer Lopez in a listless performance as a sleek tiger? Or rappers Nicki Minaj and Drake in glorified cameos as teenaged woolly mammoths? (You know Drake's character is a desirable young hotshot because his fur has been styled into a brush cut.) ![]() It's larded with small characters that seem to have been reverse-engineered to get more names on the poster. Ice Age: Continental Drift may be the apex of this trend. ![]() While characters in films like Beauty and the Beast were often created from whole cloth, the leads in Madagascar and The Lorax are little more than an extension of a celebrity's brand. An obvious trend in non-Pixar animated movies has been the replacement of anonymous, multifarious vocal talents with famous people. ![]() While it's morbid to think about these fuzzy little guys being hit by an asteroid, the movie also underlines the fate of another quickly dying species: the Hollywood voice actor. That's pretty dark stuff for a movie created for small children, and the dramatic irony probably won't play with adults either. "Doesn't it weigh on you that the world may be ending?" asks one humourless hedgehog, before he's popped on the nose. For one thing, the prospect of end times is a macabre running gag, with prescient animals speculating about their own demise as the rocks and glaciers around them begin cracking up. While watching the new Ice Age movie – the latest from DreamWorks's cartoon franchise about mammoths, sloths and other critters before the dawn of man – it's hard not to think about extinction. ![]()
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