Ice Age

Rating:
Summary: Pleases the kiddies, but not the adults
Review: I don't really feel qualified to judge whether or not children will enjoy this film or not - I just don't know. As an adult I can say I did not hate this film. It failed the ultimate goal of providing entertainment to both children and their parents via over the kid's heads humor and references. Films such as Toy Story, Shrek and Monsters, Inc. achieved this lofty goal and their commercial success is the result.

The plot is pretty standard: a sloth, woolly mammoth and saber tooth tiger band together during the last ice age to return a baby human to the father. While the combination of characters is unique, the formula is very common. This is essentially an animated buddy road trip movie with three divergent characters who clash at first but eventually form friendships after spending enough forced time together.

Romano does a fine job as the giant with a heart of gold wooly mammoth. The always insane Leguizamo stuffs cotton balls in his cheeks to voice the clueless and defenseless misfit sloth. And finally Denis Leary is the cunning and scheming tiger with a hidden agenda.

The look of Ice Age is in the vein of a classic animated film, as opposed to a film like Shrek that achieves a near photorealistic level of detail. Although I doubt many of the kids who see these films could care one way or another.

Ultimately from a viewer perspective Ice Age fails to achieve much in the way of originality. Its plot is painfully obvious from start to finish. The eventual turnaround from good to evil by Diego is a forgone conclusion. A return from a seemingly fatal attack by Diego in the final scene was an obvious ploy for a little unearned emotion and drama.

I was bothered through the entire film by a nagging question. Why were these tigers so obsessed with this baby? The pack plans this whole elaborate attack on a human settlement just to get at this tiny baby. As a meal, this hardly seems worth it. The story alludes to an attempt at revenge and to "send a message" to the humans. I wasn't buying it.

Finally there is a little bit of a left wing, harmony of nature, can't we all just get along undertone to several scenes. Nothing as overt or ridiculous as say Disney's The Lion King but there nonetheless. In particular a scene when Manny has some sort of animal flashback or perhaps just an imagined event in which a mom, dad and child mammoth are cornered and attacked by some stick figure human hunters. The film jokes about the "obligation" of predators to consume their prey, as if they had a choice. Ok, maybe I'm reaching a bit in a kid flick, but hey I've got to look for something!