Review of Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) by Phil H — 19 Jul 2012

I like how they use the realtime events in Earth's ancient history as guidelines for the continuing adventures in this franchise. This time the nicely accurate problem of the Ice Age coming to a slow end and massive pending floods risking the lives of everything.

We are introduced to a whole bunch of mammal families in this film, all kinds of small to large creatures that now live and play with our original trio. The first impression you get instantly is this time its really aimed at the kids route. There are cute little furry things with big eyes running around with their parents looking after them, more silly childish little visual gags and of course the eventual introduction of female mammoth 'Ellie'.

The new mammoth also brings two little sidekick creatures with her that use modern slang with visual references from time to time, clearly to appeal to the whole spectrum of young people. By far the worst characters in the new film and always a mistake to go down that route.

The plot is simple again (kids film remember), all the creatures must escape their current home within a large valley because it will flood, not too original this time. Predictably this entails the same kind of japes that we saw in the first film but merely with new mammals to join in. The new mammoth voiced by Queen Latifah also predictably adds a nice cuddly romance into the fold which for myself (and possibly other male adults) kinda made things a bit lame.

The two sea reptiles that pursue the team are a nice menacing touch. They don't look too nasty obviously but its cool to see all various types of prehistoric creatures being used, factual or not doesn't matter here.

Voices are all the same which is good continuity. This mean we do get more greatness from Leguizamo as 'Sid' who is still easily the best character here. Latifah is a pleasant surprise as 'Ellie' with her quite soothing peaceful voice but all the other characters are more generic, annoying, forgettable and merely filler for the background.

Being made a good fours years after the first effects have gotten better also. The whole thing still has that nice minimalistic look to it (mainly backgrounds and ice), I still think it has the old Chuck Jones feel about it at times. Character rendering is much sharper this time, especially on fur, not that is was all that bad in the first film. All the characters look really good accept for 'Diego' whose design is much more static, he was the same in the first film. The really impressive moments are water animations and how they pull off wet fur, this impressed me, 'Sid's' fur looking real enough to reach out and touch.

More of a let down for me this one, its still a quality animated film but very much in favour for the youngsters this time. I'm still loving 'Sid' with Leguizamo's top voice and of course you still have 'Scrat' tearing around after his acorn in the excellent running gag/subplot throughout the whole film. Not tired of that lill saber-toothed squirrel yet, that one slither of humour keeps me coming back for more.