Ice Age: Continental Drift – Movie Review

“I told you your father would never give up on us.”—Ellie

In the Continental Drift installment of the Ice Age movies, Ellie and her daughter Peaches are separated from Manny (Ellie’s husband, Peaches’ Dad) by separating continents in the continental drift.  (Of course, the entire continental drift is unwittingly started because of Scrat’s desperate attempt to procure an acorn…which in itself has some very interesting moral implications—even small, innocent actions can set into motion a catastrophic chain of events…etc.  If you wanted to go there with your kids!)  The movie follows the family of mammoths as they try to find a way to reunite, despite the monumental elements (things like weather, shifting continents, pirates, etc.) which seem determined to keep them apart.

Peaches faces a lot of doubts and fears about how they will survive this and whether or not she’ll ever see her father again.  But her mother keeps telling her with complete confidence that she can trust her father to find a way to get them all together again.  Ellie has complete confidence in Manny because she knows his character and determination.  She knows the kind of mammoth he is, and the depth of love he has for his family.  In the end they are reunited and Ellie’s faith in Manny is justified and confirmed.  She tells Peaches, “I told you your father would never give up on us.”

This is a great opportunity to teach your kids a little about sin and the nature and the character of God.  Sin is like the continental drift.  It tore a rift between man and God.  Suddenly we were separated from our Heavenly Father who loved us.  We could do nothing to get back to God, so it was all on Him to make a way to get back to us.

God loves us so much He sent His only Son to die for us.  Why?  He did it because it was the only way to get us back and because our Heavenly Father will never give up on us.  He will do whatever it takes to give His love to us.  In the movie, Manny told Ellie and Peaches to get to the land bridge.  In real life there wasn’t a bridge between God and man, so God had to make one.  He made it with Jesus and the cross.  Jesus died to pay the penalty for sin which separated God and man.  Jesus’ death is our bridge, it’s the way for God to come down to us and reunite with us and show His faithful, never-ending, never-quitting love to us.

Even after we’ve been reunited with our heavenly Father, there are going to be times where we feel scared—times when circumstances separate us from our loved ones and take our security and sense of protection away.  Life can be scary.  And in those scary times, it can seem like we are separated from God.  It can seem like God is lost to us forever.  The world will tell you that God doesn’t love you and/or He isn’t powerful enough to save you.

When things like that happen, it’s important to really know who God is.  It’s important to know His character and to be able to trust His power and His word.  There were times for Ellie and Peaches that all they had to cling to was the knowledge that Manny was a big, powerful mammoth that wouldn’t give up until he found them again.  We have so much more to cling to.  We have the almighty God, the King of Kings, Creator of the Universe.  He’s all-knowing and all-powerful.  He works all things out according to His purposes…and all He does is love because He IS love, even though it may not always feel like it in the moment.  It may feel like our circumstances are too big for God to handle.  It may feel like God’s love isn’t looking out for us…but we can’t let our feelings dictate what truth is.  Truth is so much bigger than what we see or feel or perceive.

It’s in those times that we need to know what the truth is—so we can cling to it when our circumstances try to make a liar out of truth.  We need to be like Ellie, so confident in who God is and what He can do that our circumstances don’t scare us.

Questions for Discussion:

• Has your sin ever felt like a continental drift keeping you from God, or from any other loved ones in your life?
• Have you walked on the land bridge that Jesus created with His death on the cross so that you could have a relationship with your Father in Heaven? (i.e. have you accepted Jesus’ death as payment for your sins and thanked Him for making a way so that you and God could be together?)
• Have you had times when circumstances seemed scary and overwhelming?
• Have you had a friend or parent (like Ellie) in your life who was able to help you find peace and comfort because they were able to remind you of God’s character, His nature, and His love for you?  How did that help you?
• What things do you know about who God is?  What do you know about His character, His power, His feelings about you?  Where did you get those ideas/thoughts…is it a reliable source?

 

-By Stacey Tuttle

 

Click to hear read quotes from Ice Age: Continental Drift.