Ice Age 4

Took my kids to see the 1925 Eisenstein classic, Battleship Potemkin.

Only joking!

It was Ice Age 4.

An enterprising home ed mama secured a private screening for 30 of us home educating types at a discount. (See? You school choosers? We home ed parents HAVE IT ALL.)

Now any parent obviously needs to know about Ice Age 4. It's one of the school holiday things to do, right?

As you'd expect, Ice Age 4 is not a ground-breaking film employing montage as a narrative device to explore the drama that led to the 1905 Russian rebellion against the Tsarist regime.

Ice Age 4 is actually about a woolly mammoth, a sabre-toothed cat, and a sloth.

Oh yeah, there's a squirrel called Scrat, who really is the star of the show and should have his own movie.

The mammoth, cat and sloth run around a lot going NOOOOOOO! because the rocks and the ice are breaking apart! and they have to run to safety.

Dramatic tension is provided by way of a baboon lookalike called Captain Gutt with his piratical lifestyle (selfish, deceitful, sure to end badly); additional humour for grandma is provided by the sloth's granny (looks like a vulture and is mean but insightful); and the love interest for the sabre cat is provided by way of a lady cat (looks a bit like a snow leopard). She has an attitude problem (cute'n'kooky so you know it will end in submission).

After a lot of flying-through-the-air, crash-landing and ice-breaking, all the animals reach safety in the land of the free which looks like America.

Yeah. That's it. It's like Ice Age 1,2,3 except this one is called 4.

I'm telling myself it's a media education, of sorts. And just another step on the way to Eisenstein.