Ice Age 4 reworks the old-worn message of faith in family and friends in a satisfying way, and sometimes with welcome dramatic surprises.

It is no news to say that the Ice Age franchise always brings forward the question of 'what makes a family' and answers 'family is where your heart is'. In Ice Age 4, this persistent motto is not only repeated, but it has its own characters defend it as such.

Manny, Sid and Diego (voiced by Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary respectivley ) are accidentally separated from their loved ones by a continental drift that threatens to change the Earth geography and its inhabitants (but with less menace than the ice melting in Ice Age 2, and now with good stereoscopic effects to the purpose).

But even though Manny's wife, Ellie (Queen Latifah) and his teenager daughter, Peaches (Keke Palmer) stay behind to face their own love and community problems, the trio is not alone. Sid now has an almost intelligence-devoid, toothless yet always inventive granny  (Wanda Sykes), who follows the group -and provides crucial solutions to the problems they face in the ocean.

Ice Age 3 cleverly moved the action from the icy field to a visual environment closer to The Land Before Time. Ice Age 4 now borrows pop culture, and pays its own homage to the pirate story. The three heroes will have to face a mean and large version of Buck from Ice Age 3, Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage).

His relentless rule dominates the crew, among them  the sabre-toothed cat Shira (Jennifer Lopez), whose process of character transformation, 'from the herd to the group', mirrors what Diego himself had to face in the first Ice Age story.

As usual in the franchise, Ice Age 4 is filled with happily improbable action scenes. However, this film has more to comment in dramatic power, especially in the way pirate battles are reshuffled and need to be fought again when noone expects it so. Ice Age 4 handles its multiple characters well, without the need to escalate into a big monster to make the story tempting -but beware of Granny and her friend.

The usual film references abound (The Wizard of Oz is an early tribute here).

Yet, the sweetness of Ice Age 4 is that it enlists literary material, such as Homer's Odyssey and the Myth of the Atlantis, into the adventure front -even though Scrat's treatment of ancient civilization is too vulgar, and not funny at all).

Ice Age 4 may not be as visually impressive as its predecessor, yet offers a solid adventure in which the continental drift is only the initiating narrative cause, never its overarching element. It does not break novel ground, but is entertaining throughout.

Vassilis Kroustalis