I'm not the world's biggest fan of animated films, but this one had me smiling.
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With so many full-length animated features appearing all the time in new and innovative formats from traditional line drawings to computer graphics, I wonder if we aren't in the midst of a Golden Age of animation.
Fox Studio's 2002, "Ice Age" follows in the footsteps of "Shrek," "Monster's, Inc.," "Tarzan," "Atlantis," "Dinosaur," "Final Fantasy," "Lilo and Stitch," plus reissues of older classics like "Beauty and the Beast," "Snow White," and a host of others. While the CGI "Ice Age" may not be at the head of every viewer's list of best animations, that it is able to compete at all is high tribute to its sweet characters and its extraordinary visual style. I'm not the world's biggest fan of animated films, but this one had me smiling.
My wife commented a short way into the movie that it reminded her of a Road Runner cartoon, and, indeed, the slapstick antics of the main characters are reminiscent of the old Warner Brothers crew (although "Ice Age" was produced for Fox). This is particularly true of Scrat, an Ice Age rodent, half squirrel and half rat, forever trying to hide away an acorn; and Sid, a sloth who is all mouth. Both take pratfalls in the best cartoon manner.
The story begins some 20,000 years ago during the southward migration of mammals to avoid the oncoming ice, and it concerns the adventures of a trio of beasts who come together in a common cause. The tale is simplistic, and its events are easy for most discerning adults to foretell in advance, but it is an animation that must be appreciated by kids as well as by older folk, so a few concessions have to be made.
The three main characters are Sid the sloth, voiced by John Leguizamo; Manfred, or Manny, the Mammoth, voiced by Ray Romano; and Diego the saber-toothed tiger, voiced by Denis Leary. The movie reminded me a lot of "Shrek" in its relationship between Sid and Manny. The mammoth is a huge beast who just wants to be left alone, like Shrek; the sloth is a motor mouth, a nonstop talker like Donkey, who wants to chum around with him. Sid hasn't the clever one-liners that Donkey has, but the repartee of the two animals is similar. Likewise, the movie reminded me of "Monsters, Inc.," in that its characters are all appealing and lovable in spite of their often formidable appearance.
This is not to say there aren't some cute gags in the film: "No 'buts' about it," says a mother to her offspring, trying to hurry them along, "You can play extinction later." Then, one of the armadillo-like creatures says he's is on the verge of "an evolutionary breakthrough." And an army of dodo birds is preparing for the coming Ice Age by storing up all of three melons. Well, they're not called "dodos" for nothing. And spitting out Sid, Diego declares, "I don't eat junk food." Things like that.
Anyhow, the plot concerns the attempted but unsuccessful kidnapping of a human baby by a pack of tigers, of whom Diego is one. Manny and Sid rescue the child from a river, unaware of how he got there, and with much persuasion on Sid's part they decide to return the kid to its parents, no easy job since the humans are on the move south along with the animals. Diego insinuates himself into Manny and Sid's good graces by pretending to want to lead them to the humans' new camp, but he's secretly trying to get the baby for himself and his pals. Needless to say, the three disparate individuals are initially at each other's throats and then begin to bond as they each fall in love with the kid.
The story moves slowly at first, but not as slowly as "Dinosaur." If you stick with it, you'll find "Ice Age" and its goofy characters growing on you. By the time you get to the wild ride through the ice caves and the hazards of the volcanic peaks, you'll be hooked. The background music, by composer David Newman, is also charming and largely unobtrusive, a blessed relief from some of the overblown soundtracks I've endured.
However, probably the best thing about the film is its look. It's done up in computer graphics, as I mentioned, but they're not in the usual fashion of CGI. The animals and the backgrounds are not as detailed as those in "Monsters, Inc." or "Shrek"; they're simpler and more stylized, yet they are no less striking. They take a moment to get used to, but then they look perfectly normal, still three-dimensional but fantasy-like, too. What I had thought in the beginning to be inferior art work soon turned out to be simply different and unique art work.
"Ice Age" is a delightful little film that just misses being at the top of its genre but is still worth one's time, especially if one has a family to think of.
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