Surprise content! The other night, I was expressing some appreciation to an actor in some to me classics from the late 80s and early 90s over on the tweeters, and Patrick Labyorteaux got me off guard with a dare to watch one of his more recent movies, 2012 Ice Age

I checked it’s availability, found it readily available on TubiTV and promptly accepted the dare. Not only is it up our alley in general, but it’s also from The Asylum which is notorious for its very purposely low budget product. I’m in heaven. While we still have a poll running for our next user-voted movie (make sure you vote), we’re adding 2012: Ice Age as bonus content. Lets get to it.

Calling “2012: Ice Age” a movie is considered illegal in some states, but knowing that it’s from The Asylum renders all illegality null and void in the first place, so we’re good there.

Ice age is your standard Asylum natural disaster film, wherein right from the getgo, a volcano in Iceland erupts, causing a 1000 mile long glacier to break off from the shelf, and start racing southwards. Don’t take me to task for these measurements, I just quote the bad movie.

Intrepid alleged homosexual zombie football star turned scientist Ram “Bill” Sweeney has gone off and married Mike Seaver’s former main squeeze Julie “Teri” Costello. Ram is with his son Nelson, dropping off his daughter Julia, to take off to New York for her first year of college. He’s so distracted with trying to figure out what’s going on at his dayjob, that he basically misses seeing Julia off, and in the process is completely rude to airport security officer someone, who was just trying to do her job.

Head south!

In very short time, New Foundland is basically scraped off the map thanks to Super Glacier. Characters are being told to head south as fast and as soon as possible, to get out of its way.

Ram and Nelson pick up Julie and struggle for minutes to convince her that they need to get out of dodge asap and head south. Naturally, she’s worried about their daughter Julia, so they need to book it to New York to pick her up.

Road trip!

Whoa

_― Nelson

Use words, Nelson

_― Seaver’s ex

I don’t think I can

_― Nelson

I can’t either to justify this movie

_― Gilbert Shear

There is definitely a lack of comedic element in this movie, so I’m going to be trying to make some chicken salad out of chicken excrement. Probably a good thing that there’s no comedy, as the comedy movie community would shun everyone involved.

Throughout the movie there are instances of military grade jets attacking the glacier, and breaking it up into smaller parts, including at one point nuclear firepower that allegedly does zero discernible damage. At the same time though, plenty of instances of ice shrapnel, squashing the innocent, nearly driving our heroes off the road, puncturing frozen rivers which no sell and don’t break the top layer much.

Just like that…RIP Bangor Maine

Our first jump scare comes when Ram almost rams into crashed cars ahead of him on the street, and they crash and overturn their car. Thanks to standard The Asylum budget, they’re largely unharmed, barring some scrapes and scratches. So, they’re stuck trying to find new wheels in the freezing hellhole called New England area. Ram, Julie, and Nelson stumble onto a van, with Ram wandering off to survey the current situation, prompting Nelson to ask what the fuck his dad is doing. He’s trying to save you, Nelson, pay attention.

Suddenly keys appear in the ignition for the van they found, and Nelson gets it started up. As he and his mom try to warm up a bit, they suddenly catch whiff of the movie they’re in and realize that the van is carrying manure. Ram returns to the vehicle and smells the movie as well, prompting him to remember science class before J.D. and Veronica killed him in 1988. Who knew Ram was paying attention at the time? Regardless, he was able to clear a path to the theater exit using the manure, some chemicals, and some diesel fuel. Shit, this movie continues on.

Meanwhile, Super Glacier is apparently hitting up Beantown and somehow instantly freezing the people there. What did Boston do to you, Super Glacier?

Attack of the Shrapnel

Anyways, Ram, Nelson, and Julie are back on the road again natural disasterly, and continuing on to New York. Of course rescuing Julia is important, but surely Julie can understand the need to possibly pick up some other stranded folks along the way with their van space available. That’s not needed for long though, thanks to more Shrapnel taking out more helpless people.

Life tries to get revenge on Julie by having the van nearly run out of gasoline, causing them to stop anyway, which leads us to a new secondary character, Gary. Gary is at the end of his rope. He’s wanting to go to California. That’s where end of their rope people always wanna go. Gary hijacks the almost out of gas van and drives off. Life gets its revenge on Gary right away, where he crashes through the ice on a river. Through some fast thinking, Nelson at least manages to rescue the radio equipment he’s been using all movie.

The family makes their way to a near by house and break in, performing petty larceny. Thank fuck they did though, because they get to steal a plane afterwards, at least once they help the house owner get unstuck from under some shelving the fell on him as he was trying to pack up and drive to safety with his kid.

What’s Julia been up to?

Good question. She initially made it safely-ish to New York and NYU campus. She met up with her boyfriend and they start fleeing and trying to find safe ground. Through bad signal they try to tell Julie that they’re not staying at the dorm like originally discussed. Eventually Julia and boyfriend walk through the subway system from New York to New Jersey. Bad weather has a way of getting to everyone, but an attempted mugging is just another Jersey afternoon. Thankfully the National Guard was there to save them, as the US had officially declared war on Super Glacier.

Back on the plane, Ram, Julie, and Nelson are trying to get some frequent flier miles out of the whole ordeal of saving Julia, but the bad weather is having bad effects on the plane. Not long into the flight and they already need to land due to lack of fuel in the right engine and freezing wings. They try to reach out to nearby airports but no one answers, so they just say fuck it and approach a landing strip, only to almost be taken out by a completely different plane taking off. Here I thought all flights were grounded, but the plot must go on.

Another crash resulting in more lack of injury due to The Asylum budget, but there’s at least an exploding plane due to leaking left engine fuel. Everyone’s saved by an attendant at the airport! Yay! Too bad the attendant forgot about the second jump scare in the budget, and died.

New York, New York

Our heroes had finally made it to New York, or at least the Jersey side. They find another vehicle, fourth one of the movie if you’ve been keeping track, and try to drive into Manhattan. Local authorities tell them that’s impossible, because well, the bridge is out. Possibly the most logical moment in the movie.

Ram and Julie start reminiscing on how they wish they could have implanted tracking devices on their kids when they were younger, for moments like this. Good thing society made such a thing fashionable via mobile phones. In the end, they didn’t have to worry about ethics of such tracking as we do that all consensually. Nelson grabs the phone and within a minute has tracked down his sister’s GPS location. They’re only a couple blocks away!

Is that the light at the end of this movie or is it just me?

No, it’s also the obligatory token “The end is near!” character, more concerned about holding up a sign than he is saving himself.

The family goes on foot at this point as it’s quicker than trying to locate Julia by car. Ram finds a gun on a frozen pig, and uses it to shoot the air like Veronica did to him back in high school. At least this time it helped locate Julia. The family is all back together!

For reasons unknown to everyone, including the writers and directors, suddenly the family is all back together in the car driving on the frozen Hudson river. Remember how I mentioned rivers no selling falling ice shrapnel? The Hudson is no different. Despite it being pierced many times by large ice boulders, it’s stable enough to drive on and the family is racing towards the Statue of Liberty. Ole Lady Liberty apparently looked like a safe place to go, and thankfully she’s stable enough to save everyone as the National Guard has finally managed to stop the progression of Super Glacier.

Mercifully, this movie is finally over.

Final thoughts

Honestly, this is going in at number 4 of my “Top Patrick Labyorteaux movies” list.

1. Ski School
2. Summer School
3. Heathers
4. 2012 Ice Age

If and as I watch others that Patrick has had parts in, I suspect the ranking will go down quicker than the expectations I had for “Titanic 2”, though I am doubtful the top 3 is going to budge much.

Do I think everyone should see this movie? Yes absolutely. Why? Because if I willingly put myself through it twice for the sake of this post, I absolutely want everyone else to be tortured by it too.

No word yet on what prompted Patrick to take on the role, but I have asked.