April 24, 2006
The Ice Age is back. After the big freeze of the first film, now we have the meltdown. The globe is warming and Manny the Mammoth, Sid the Sloth and Diego the sabretooth tiger are heading for the hills to avoid the mother of all dambursts. And they’re not alone. Fearing himself the last of his species, Manny meets a mammoth who thinks she’s a possum. Sid the matchmaker wants to get them together while Diego’s pussyfooting around trying to keep out of the water. Abetted by two badly-behaved kiddie-possums, the crew heads out of harm's way. To top it all, though, Scrat’s back too – the toothsome squawky rodent who wants nothing more than an acorn and a quiet life but gets big trouble and the biggest laughs instead.
Ice Age 2 carries a big whether warning – i.e. it’s a toss-up whether you’ll like it. If you loved the first film, revelling in its smart one-liners and strikingly realized set-pieces, then this is a big disappointment. At best what Meltdown gives is a fast-paced ragbag of colourful sketches, heavy on the slapstick, with some chucklesome lines thrown in. The animation is great to watch and there’s more than enough going on to keep the kids amused. But that’s also its drawback. With characters already established, Meltdown had to do something different with its running time. So up pop the possums replacing Ice Age’s silly sabretooths, and in comes a female mammoth (voiced by Queen Latifah) to add some gender-balance to the previously all male ecology. And with humans out of the frame the focus is squarely on the furry, the scaly and the shelly – all manner of creatures – who zip in and out all-too-brief sequences that strain for effect. Relying less on its animation and too much on the American weakness for gabby chit-chat, Meltdown grates more than it should. Still, the trio of main-character voices is as good as ever – especially John Leguizamo’s brilliantly-done Sid the Sloth, an effervescent delivery that’s bang on the button, and deserving of a place in the voice-over hall of fame.
But the filmmakers knew that the biggest star of the first film – and the source of the best fun in this one – is Scrat. The eye-bulging adventures of the hapless rat-ancestor are interspersed more freely throughout Meltdown and some of his scrapes deserve to rank alongside the best of Tom & Jerry, Looney Toons and other cartoon greats.
With some scary bits and plenty of silly stuff (a vulture sing-song of ‘Food Glorious Food’), Meltdown is more manic and less mature than the first film, but sort of fun nonetheless. Though maybe the youngest won’t notice, too many of the fast-paced scenes fall flat and some oldies might find themselves wishing a spot of natural selection on the irritating possums.
Rather than making another sequel, maybe those folks at Twentieth Century Fox could give us a series of Scrat cartoons instead. Now that would be cool.
Ice Age 2 carries a big whether warning – i.e. it’s a toss-up whether you’ll like it. If you loved the first film, revelling in its smart one-liners and strikingly realized set-pieces, then this is a big disappointment. At best what Meltdown gives is a fast-paced ragbag of colourful sketches, heavy on the slapstick, with some chucklesome lines thrown in. The animation is great to watch and there’s more than enough going on to keep the kids amused. But that’s also its drawback. With characters already established, Meltdown had to do something different with its running time. So up pop the possums replacing Ice Age’s silly sabretooths, and in comes a female mammoth (voiced by Queen Latifah) to add some gender-balance to the previously all male ecology. And with humans out of the frame the focus is squarely on the furry, the scaly and the shelly – all manner of creatures – who zip in and out all-too-brief sequences that strain for effect. Relying less on its animation and too much on the American weakness for gabby chit-chat, Meltdown grates more than it should. Still, the trio of main-character voices is as good as ever – especially John Leguizamo’s brilliantly-done Sid the Sloth, an effervescent delivery that’s bang on the button, and deserving of a place in the voice-over hall of fame.
But the filmmakers knew that the biggest star of the first film – and the source of the best fun in this one – is Scrat. The eye-bulging adventures of the hapless rat-ancestor are interspersed more freely throughout Meltdown and some of his scrapes deserve to rank alongside the best of Tom & Jerry, Looney Toons and other cartoon greats.
With some scary bits and plenty of silly stuff (a vulture sing-song of ‘Food Glorious Food’), Meltdown is more manic and less mature than the first film, but sort of fun nonetheless. Though maybe the youngest won’t notice, too many of the fast-paced scenes fall flat and some oldies might find themselves wishing a spot of natural selection on the irritating possums.
Rather than making another sequel, maybe those folks at Twentieth Century Fox could give us a series of Scrat cartoons instead. Now that would be cool.