'Ice Age' franchise has run its course

"Ice Age: Collision Course," the fifth installment in the 14-year-long saga of animated prehistoric animals, will, with any luck, also be the last. Lazy, scattershot and excruciatingly unfunny, the movie is a hazard to the very young, who might come away with the erroneous impression that movies don't get any better than this.

The story is set into motion - yet again - by that irritating saber-toothed squirrel in search of an acorn. Scrat accidentally ends up in a UFO, pinballing around the cosmos. The good news - for the universe, not the viewer - is that all that bouncing around somehow leads to the formation of our galaxy. The bad news is that the activity sends a huge, destructive asteroid hurtling toward Earth.

Down on the Blue Planet, Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano) is fretting over losing his daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) to her betrothed. Manny's buddy, the lisping sloth Sid (John Leguizamo), has just had his heart broken, and saber-toothed tigers Diego and Shira (Denis Leary and Jennifer Lopez) are lamenting that every young animal in the kingdom is terrified of them.

Of course, they've got a bigger problem to worry about: the imminent destruction of their planet.

To help with that conundrum, they have the crafty, one-eyed weasel Buck (Simon Pegg), who formulates a far-fetched plan involving magnetic space rocks. Nothing, however, can save them from the terrible dialogue and stale jokes.