Review of Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) by Markbayer — 09 Apr 2006

It would be easy just to summarize this enjoyable sequel to Blue Sky's CGI-animated blockbuster as the ultimate "if you liked Numero Uno, ditto with Numero Dos" movie, but some special congratulations are in order.

After Blue Sky scored with the original, they made the disastrous mistake of trying to top themselves in all the wrong ways, and as a result we got Robots, a visually outlandish but criminally underwritten (and thoroughly unattractive and unappealing) farrago crammed with witless, desperate pop-culture one-liners and gratuitous but completely indistinctive celebrity voice casting.

Praise the heavens that the writers, animators, designers (and let's be honest about it, the bean counters too) at Blue Sky at least temporarily renounced the errors of their ways and returned to what served them so well in the original Ice Age: restrained but effective visuals, solid scripting, plotting and gagwriting, distinctive and appealing characterizations, and vocal choices made with almost laser- (or Pixar-) like precision.

Many adults (and pretty much ALL kids) know the drill by now: irascible saber-toother tiger Diego, morose mammoth Manny, and friendly but irritating sloth Sid make a trek from Point A to Point B, fighting the elements, various other creatures, and sometimes each other, along the way; it's simple, but it works.

Denis Leary is a tad underused this time as Diego, but John Leguizamo's natural a-little-bit-of-him-goes-a-long-way qualities are perfect for Sid, and Ray Romano makes the widowed Manny wonderfully Eeyore-like.

An added romantic element is effortlessly inserted as Manny attempts to kindle an on-again, off-again romance with lady mammoth Ellie (a typically witty and charismatic Queen Latifah) that's constantly roadblocked by his memories of the past and her utter conviction that she's a possum.

(For the second time in a row in an Ice Age movie, we get some Traumatic Mammoth Flashback Footage that provides backstory, but if your little one couldn't take Dumbo's heartbreaking seperation from his mom, best take him or her out for an obligatory bathroom break.

) It's a real compliment to Romano, Latifah and their writers that this subplot manages to contain more urgency and rooting interest than is evident in 90% of the live-action romcoms released in the last 5 years.

All this, and a delicious back-comic musical sequence performed by vultures, too! And no, I haven't forgotten Scrat, the scruffy little squirrel-rat whose perpetually twitchy demeanor suggests that of a 70-year-old man who's lived right next to the airport for most of his life.

There's a lot more of him and his agonizing, Sisyphean struggle to get and keep his beloved acorn this time around, here reaching epic and even theological proportions. If the noticeably increased Scrat sequences are the result of market research inquiries indicating that audiences wanted to see more of him, then here's a rare case of pollsters actually IMPROVING a movie rather than the reverse.

Many comparisons have been made between Scrat and Wile E. Coyote, but while Wile E. pretty much just wants to eat the Road Runner, Scrat is even more acutely sympathetic because in the few, frustratingly fleeting moments when he gets to hold on to the acorn (which is almost a seperate character in and of itself), his facial expression, body language and sounds demonstrate more genuine love and tenderness toward the object of his devotion than I've seen some mothers show toward their babies! Some years ago the General Mills cereal company asked the TV-viewing public to vote on whether the similarly thwarted Trix Rabbit should finally be allowed to eat a bowl of his favorite sugary breakfast treat; the vote was "yes" by an overwhelming majority.

If Blue Sky ever decides to conduct a similar survey involving Scrat and his acorn, mark me down in advance as the first yea vote.