Will the next Ice Age really be this boring?

Rating: 4/10 (15 April 2007)

Aren't natural disaster flicks supposed to be exciting? Network TV has come up with better stories than this on their "Disaster Movie of the Week" installments. This movie moves at a pace that would put a snail to sleep.
The premise of the climate entering a brief "Ice Age" has been worked before, and better. This flick just doesn't do much with the idea, giving weak and random interpretations of how it might occur. Nothing transpires in logical order, and inconsistencies regarding the climate's changes are everywhere. Technology seems to have been disabled, then it's not. Storms are supposedly happening around the world, then they're suddenly confined to certain areas. CGI special effects are sporadically realistic, but utilized poorly.
But the biggest problem with this film is its preoccupation with one ignorant family. The dad is a scientist who warns people (oh so brilliantly) to stay indoors and keep warm during the crisis. Then he wanders outside into the arctic tundra northeast to find his son someplace in New York City. His kid with the glazed expression: that's Jake Gyllenhall, who apparently thinks he's still on the set of "Donnie Darko." Very little else happens, although the movie throws in some doomed extras, several plot contrivances, and some dumb wolves that wandered on to the set during filming one day. Watch this for a good laugh only.