Basically: Two possums want to be like their favorite superhero Buck Wild AKA the weasel from an Ice Age sequel that came out over 12 years ago.
They’re really scraping the bottom of the story barrel here, y’all. The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is the sixth movie in the Ice Age franchise. Somehow the world has ended and restarted, Manny (Sean Kenin) and Ellie (Dominique Jennings) had a kid who is now grown and gone, and we are still here. This franchise is like the new Land Before Time.
The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild follows Crash (Vincent Tong) and Eddie (Aaron Harris), Ellie’s two possum brothers. They just want to have fun and get into trouble without their sister constantly telling them what to do or keeping them safe. Crash and Eddie want to be treated like grown-ups but they don’t want to act like grown-ups. So the two leave home in the dead of night and end up in the tunnel that leads to the Lost World, which is where the dinosaurs live (who were introduced in the third movie).
There they run into Buck (Simon Pegg), the weasel who protects the Lost World and who once helped them before. Knowing these two can’t survive on their own, Buck takes them under his wing until he can lead them home. Yet one thing is stopping them: Orson (Utkarsh Ambudkar), a small triceratops with a large brain. Orson wants to control the Lost World and make it only for dinosaurs…but first he needs to get rid of Buck Wild.
The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is pretty weird. It looks unfinished and cheap (even though people worked hard on it). Some scenes look like incomplete renders with shoddy lighting and no shadows or ray tracing. At times the characters’ fur will look strange and not rendered correctly but then seconds later it will look noticeably better.
It was hard for me to focus on the story because I was completely stuck on what must have been going on during production. The movie itself is passable. Since it’s mostly about the two possum brothers and Buck Wild, you don’t get to see most of the classic cast. While there is a B-plot about Ellie & co. searching for Clash and Eddie, it’s pretty boring and paint-by-numbers.
The sad thing is that none of the famous voice actors from the previous movies return. This chapter features sound-alikes. The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild feels like material made for Disney+ and a way to make more 20th Century Fox throwaway material. At most, I guess, you can put this on for young kids to keep their attention for a little while but eventually you’ll all get bored.
In the End: The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is a barely serviceable entry to the long-running family franchise. It looks unfinished and maybe should’ve been shelved or at least given more production time.
