The love life of a woolly mammoth - handled with U-rated delicacy - drives this sequel to the first computer-animated romp in the age of prehistoric...... more
The love life of a woolly mammoth - handled with U-rated delicacy - drives this sequel to the first computer-animated romp in the
age of prehistoric mammals. While the first
Ice Age took a delightful premise and suffocated it with a formulaic plot - in which a mammoth named Manfred (voiced by Ray Romano, Everyone Loves Raymond), a sloth named Sid (John Leguizamo, Moulin Rouge!), and a sabre-tooth tiger named Diego (Denis Leary, Rescue Me) helped an abandoned human infant return to its tribe (basically, Three Mammals and a Baby) - the sequel takes the now-familiar setting, gives it a shapeless, episodic storyline, and yet somehow becomes pretty darn entertaining. Faced with the threat of a flood from melting
ice, our heroic trio are on the run to escape from their blossoming valley. On the way, they meet a female mammoth (Queen Latifah, Bringing Down the House) who thinks she's an opossum and get menaced by some freshly defrosted carnivorous fish. Add into the mix a herd of lava-worshipping mini-sloths, some Busby Berkeley-style vultures, and more ingenious slapstick featuring the acorn-crazed Scrat, and
Ice
Age: The Meltdown will amuse even jaded adults. --Bret Fetzer
... less