YMMV / The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild

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• Ass Pull: The movie reveals that before the events of the movie, there seemed to exist conflict between mammals and dinosaurs in The Lost World which lead to Orson to play The Social Darwinist and decide the reptiles should rule over everything causing the events of the movie. This however doesn't add up with all the information we know about the Lost World from the previous movies where it was shown to be an uncivilized Death World with very few sapient Dinosaurs (there were actually no sapient dinosaurs at all until Collision Course) and no mammals besides Buck himself (and even he was heavily implied to come from the Ice Age world in the first place) thus making the idea that there were enough mammals and sapient dinosaurs to make possible any sort of Fantastic Racism tension in this setting highly unlikely, much less enough for a full-blown Great Offscreen War to be possible.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The consensus among fans and critics is that the strong points of the Ice Age franchise are the Scrat segments, the high-quality animation and the chemistry between Ray Romano, Denis Leary, and John Leguizamo, so naturally an Ice Age movie that didn't have any of those things failed to Win Back the Crowd among older fans and lacked appeal to newer viewers or people who didn't care about the previous movies.
• Character Rerailment: Despite being heavily panned by critics and fans alike, the film has gotten some minor points of praise for reverting some of the characters closer to their original personalities, after the Flanderization they suffered in Continental Drift and especially Collision Course.
  • With Peaches absent, Manny has shed his overprotective/smothering traits and is more like the Jerk with a Heart of Gold he was in the first two films.
  • Sid's airheaded cluelessness from the past two films is also notably toned down, bringing him closer to the Kindhearted Simpleton he was introduced as.
  • Similarly, Buck has also gone back to his eccentric yet badass personality after spending Collision Course being nothing more than a practically insane exposition-spewer who also happened to be Demoted to Comic Relief.
• Creator's Pet: When the movie was announced it was referred to as an adventure focused on three fan favorites: Buck, Crash and Eddie, which seemed strange to a lot of fans as while they were right about Buck, the other two were considered The Scrappy of the franchise despite their very early introduction leading to fears to this trope. Which sadly proved true once the movie was released and they became the Spotlight-Stealing Squad to every other character, got a lot of Character Shilling in the way and end up being the ones who save the day while Buck gets hit with The Worf Effect. Buck's fans weren't pleased.
• Critical Backlash: There are some who can see past the film's flaws and budget constraints, and appreciate it for being a fun, silly romp with some surprisingly heartwarming moments. Even some who dislike it consider it a step up from Collision Course and breaking the curse of the movies doing progressively worse over the box office, if only very slightly by having a critic score 1% more positive on Rotten Tomatoes, for whatever that's worth.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Zee is this to some, for being a competent Action Girl and decent Foil to Buck. It also helps that she lacks any Faux Action Girl moments while also never upstaging Buck, making the two true equals who simply have different approaches when dealing with danger.
• Fanon: Those who don't prefer to ignore the existence of this movie like to think it happens at the same time that Scrat Tales to keep with the tradition of an A-plot focused on the Herd and a B-plot focused on Scrat
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: Most fans aren't fond of the backstory given to the titular weasel in this movie. In Dawn Of The Dinosaurs, Buck was established as a rare sentient mammal in a Death World that had to took extreme meassures to be able to defeat Rudy which lead to him becoming the Crazy Survivalist we know and love. But in the spin-off, Buck is depicted as someone who was the leader of a group of heroic mammals that proved to be the last resistance in a Fantastic Racism motivated-war, which hardly fits with how uncivilized the Lost World was shown to be in the previous movies and how Buck was portrayed as a loner before The Herd's arrival (which is why he went insane and started talking with inanimate objects).
• Fanon Discontinuity: Thanks to Crash and Eddie hogging the spotlight from Buck, the downgraded animation and fan-favourite characters being either left Out of Focus or removed altogether, many viewers - both die-hard Ice Age fans and non-fans alike - wish that this film never existed. It's even gotten bad to the point where even the crew who used to work on the franchise, including the polarizing Continental Drift and much-maligned Collision Course joined the mob.
• Fridge Brilliance: The absence of Momma Rex's three children actually makes sense given how much time has passed between the third film and this one, as Peaches was just born at the end of the third film and got married off by the fifth one. So the three rexlings likely grew up and left their mother.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While Latin American audiences don't consider it good, is has a slightly less poor reputation in there. The major reason is that unlike the original version, the Latin American dub does bring back the original voice actors and given a lot of fans already felt the Latin Dub maked the series funnier, a lot of fans see it as more enjoyable that the original version. It was also among the most watched things during the month after its release in Disney Plus in contrast to how quickly was forgotten in the English world.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The opening sequence pays tribute to the long history of the franchise, referring all the way back to the darker original film and its arc with Roshan and Manny's traumatic past.
  • Manny refers to Crash and Eddie as Ellie's side of the family, and then refers to Diego and Sid as his side of the family. Indeed, despite most of the herd having moved away, Sid and Diego still stick with Manny and Ellie, and no one seems unhappy with the arrangement.
  • Mammals have begun migrating to the lost world and are shown to be peacefully coexisting with the dinosaurs. Considering the last Mesozoic visitors to the surface world have usually been hostile characters, it's nice to see the two worlds meet peacefully and for mammals to be accepted by the stronger, more powerful dinosaurs.
  • Mama Rex reuniting with Sid. It's possible the three young rexes have grown up and left her, so it's nice to see her reunite with someone she considered family at some point, even if only briefly.
  • Buck finally gets to move on from his past and agrees to form a new family unit with Zee and the possums.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The movie is barely 82 minutes long, meaning it doesn't get much time to develop the main conflict or the character arcs of Buck, Zee, Crash and Eddie before it's over. To make matters worse, the movie also has a Slow-Paced Beginning focused on The Herd's issues with Crash and Eddie before we finally get to The Lost World. Granted, considering the poor reception, some would argue being "mercifully short" is a point in favor.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The ending of the film follows a lot of beats from the endings of the third and fifth film, right down to some of the same gags like Diego once again shedding a tear and being teased about it.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Those who didn't watch it for Bile Fascination were either interested in Simon Pegg coming back as the titular Breakout Character or those who wanted to see Momma Dino again
• Narm:
  • The movie's attempts to build up Orson as The Dreaded come up as this since every time the movie cuts back to him, it becomes painfully obvious he's a textbook Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain if there ever was one.
  • Diego being impressed with Crash and Eddie fighting the raptor army can feel like a bad case of Character Shilling especially given that what they are doing isn't much different to their Establishing Character Moment back in the second movie, making it rather ridiculous that Diego would be so impressed by it.
• Narm Charm: The opening sequence looks like something animated at the last minute and is voiced by someone clearly doing an imitation of Queen Latifah's voice of Ellie, but it also comes up as a heartwarming tribute to the Long Runner series that recaps the previous movies nicely, which could make many longtime fans of the franchise smile.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Blue Sky Studios' absence was severely felt by viewers. As inferior as the last few movies were, they at least looked good visually, whereas this one is very much a budget production.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The fact that this was a B-Team Sequel released barely a year after Disney's controversial decision to shut down Blue Sky Studios, leading to accusations that the company simply made this decision to exploit the Ice Age franchise in the cheapest way possible, is far more talked about than the actual content of the movie.
• Sequelitis: While there is actually a reasonable divide on whether this or Collision Course is the worse film, fans will still concede that it is a far cry from anything from the first three films in the series (or even Continental Drift, for that matter). This results in yet another entry in the Ice Age series that fails to reach the series' heights.
• Special Effect Failure: The downgrade in animation quality from the theatrical releases has been one of the primary criticisms of the film. While it worked for a relatively more grounded series like Monsters at Work, it really limits a setting like the Ice Age franchise, especially since Dawn of the Dinosaurs (which this film draws most heavily from) had some of the biggest action sequences and set pieces.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • To say this film had the deck stacked against it would be an understatement; it's the first piece of Ice Age media to come out after both the much-maligned Collision Course and the buyout and subsequent shuttering of Blue Sky Studios by Disney (which many fans are still bitter about). The latter reveal that the film would be less focused on its titular character than it would be on Crash and Eddie also soured fans' perceptions of it before its release.
  • Once the first trailer went online, the reception was mostly negative. With fans quickly noticing the painfully obvious downgrade in the animation, the focus on Crash and Eddie, the very blatant recast of the original voice actors, how many older characters were receiving Chuck Cunningham Syndrome and Buck being described as a "superheroe". The one thing that received mildly positive comments was Momma Dino's cameo.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The scene where Ellie sadly allows Crash and Eddie to live in the lost world, since she knows she will lose the adoptive brothers that she cared so much about (although the possum brothers do promise to visit often).
  • The flashback scene where the aforementioned three mourn the loss of their mother.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: You will have a hard time finding any review of the movie that doesn't lament the absence of Scrat.
  • Many fans lamented that Manny, Sid, and Diego were all left Out of Focus in favor of Crash and Eddie, who weren't well-received by the fanbase to begin with, having the main arc (with Ellie being the most prominent of the veteran cast).
  • Buck himself ends up being a Decoy Protagonist of his own spin-off movie. It takes most of the first act for him to finally appear only to be demoted to simply being Crash and Eddie's babysitter for most of the movie before being captured at the climax. Even those who thought Buck was one of the best aspects of the movie admited to be disappointed how little they made with him at the end of the day.
  • Despite the hype around the return of Momma Dino, she's hit with The Worf Effect early on and doesn't do much for the rest of the movie. She barely even interacts with Sid when they meet again, which can make some fans wonder why they even bothered to add her.
  • Related to that, neither Rudy nor the Baby Rexes are present in the movie despise their relevance in the third movie and to Buck and Sid as characters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • If there's one vital piece of information that fans had embraced from this movie, it is the reveal that Manny did tell Ellie about Roshan after all...too bad that we didn't see this happening on screen.
  • Momma Dino guiding The Main Herd through the Lost World while searching for Crash and Eddie could have been a very fun B-plot by having Sid reconnect with her and the rest of the Herd finally getting to know her. It could also have a nice contrast with "Dawn of Dinosaurs," where Buck is the one helping them find Momma Dino instead of the other way around. Instead, they only met with Momma Dino in the very last 10 minutes of the movie, and she immediately takes them with Buck in the very next scene.
  • While the Flashback doesn't make much sense, some fans noted that the idea of Buck starting a Badass Crew to take part in a Fantastic Racism motivated war while trying to take down a Social Darwinist Chessmaster sounded like a really awesome idea and wished that was the actual plot of the movie. It doesn't help that Orson seems much more competent in the flashback than in the present day.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • While this film is considered to have many faults, not one of them is because of Simon Pegg, who once again delivers a solid performance as Buck.
  • Most of The Other Darrins for the rest of the cast, barring Jake Green as Sid, deliver decent imitations of the original actors - especially Dominique Jennings, who is actually decent in the role of Ellie.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: The main Herd spends the entire movie looking for clues to where Crash and Eddie could be and don't make it into the Lost World until the very last 10 minutes of the movie simply to say their respective farewells towards the possoms. See They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Many were surprised by Roshan and his father Runar appearing in the Previously on… prologue, given that the franchise has been infamously ignoring their existence for the past 2 decades.
  • Some fans were also surprised to see Dodos among the population of the Lost World, given it was assumed they went extinct at some point after the second movie.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Crash and Eddie's Coming of Age Story kickstarts by the pair deciding they had to prove that they can be competent and independent in their own right. How do they decide to prove that? By abandoning the Herd without a warning and going to the most dangerous place on Earth by their own choice, basically risking their lives and worrying the Herd for no good reason besides proving a point. Not only does nobody ever mention how selfish and idiotic this decision is, but The Herd end up agreeing with them that they had become more mature because they saw them helping out in a war that they had no reason to be involved with in the first place.
  • A minor example but Manny and Diego using earplugs to not hear Sid can feel like a Kick the Dog moment mixed with Aesop Amnesia considering how much emphasis the previous movies made on Sid's low self-esteem issues and not being taken seriously by the Herd.
• Villain Decay: Orson is shown to be The Chessmaster in the flashback, being able to outsmart Buck's old crew on his own and actually kill most of them. Meanwhile, in the present day, he only manages to get as far as he does because he was able to hypnotize the raptors and doesn't seem as intelligent as the flashback implied.

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