‘Ice Age' gets cold review

April 21, 2006

Comedian Ray Romano voices Manny the Mammoth in 'Ice Age: The Meltdown.' www.movies.yahoo.com

2002’s “Ice Age” was a box-office success; however, the film itself was a complete disaster. It was an uninspired, horribly animated attempt at making a film. Of course, when a movie rakes in a lot of dough, the studios always push for a sequel, which usually ends up being a more horrible film than the first. Now, four years later, Fox has created a follow-up that is light-years ahead of the first with “Ice Age: The Meltdown.” 

Manny the mammoth, Diego the saber-tooth tiger and Sid the sloth are now trying to get out of the valley, because everything in their icy world is melting away. This time around, they must find the boat that will supposedly carry them to safety once the ice has melted away. 

Manny thinks he’s the last of the mammoths and that he will never find “the one.” As the three bachelors set off on their trek, they come across two annoying possums and their “sister,” Ellie, who happens to be a mammoth. Manny then takes it upon himself to convince Ellie she’s a mammoth, in order to preserve his species. 

Adding to this set of characters is the emergence of two evil prehistoric fish, who attempt to pick the group off one by one, as well as the rat-squirrel, Scrat, who is still chasing his ever-elusive acorn.

If this sounds like an awful lot of plot for a 90-minute kid’s movie, it is. This is one of the biggest faults of the film. It simply tries to do too much. The film doesn’t really go anywhere for the first half-hour.  I guess the filmmakers wanted to make up for the flimsy plot of the first film. If they had shaved off a lot of the unnecessary ice-melting hoopla from the first act, the film would be much better.

Another large problem I had with the film was the voice acting, if you can call it that.  Ray Romano voices Manny with all the excitement of a dead chimpanzee. Denis Leary slimes his way through another paycheck as the voice of Diego. Queen Latifah rounds out the cast in her dreadful portrayal of Ellie. The only good performance is John Leguizamo as Sid, which is not that surprising since he knows how to voice a cartoon character. Hollywood, I beg you, please stop using “big-name” actors to voice cartoon characters. Just because they are a “good” actor doesn’t mean they’ll be good at providing the voice for an animated character. 

There are few great sequences in the film, but they start popping up almost an hour into the movie. The Scrat scenes are the best bits in the whole flick. The filmmakers really needed to put more of that little guy in the film. The best scene in the entire film is a truly inspired, Disney-esque musical number involving vultures and their hunger for raw meat. 

Overall, “Ice Age: The Meltdown” is a much-needed improvement over the first film. It offers a few good laughs, some inspired comedy bits but misses the mark because it tries to do too much in its 90-minute run-time. 

2 and a 1/2 stars