Review #411: 'Ice Age' (2002)

When a group of sabre-toothed cats led by Soto (Goran Visnjic) attack a group of humans that have been hunting their pack, a mother of a new-born baby escapes, inadvertently leaving the baby with the giant mammoth Manny (Ray Romano) and his clumsy, clueless tag-a-long friend Sid (John Leguizamo), a sloth. Soto puts his lieutenant Diego (Denis Leary) in charge of finding the baby and bringing it back to him alive, so Diego befriends Manny and Sid, who are returning the baby to the humans, in an attempt to mislead them into the path of Soto and his savage pack. But they have treacherous caves and a group of idiotic dodo's in their path, amongst other things.

With a relatively microscopic budget (of around $60 million) in terms of modern funding, 20th Century Fox have managed to create a lovely-looking (although it suffers in comparison to the likes of WALL-E (2008)) piece of animation with a host of talented voice actors. Of course, due to its massive popularity, the Ice Age films have now produced three sequels, a Christmas special, and a rather impressive profit. I was interested to see why this was so popular, given the massive amount of CGI animated films being churned out these days that are of mainly poor quality. Although the film isn't exactly a classic, the well realised characters (and the voices behind them) and its genuine heart raises it above the rest.

This kind of story has been done before, for instance it was bettered in Pixar's Monsters, Inc. (2001) that came out a year before, and although it would be harsh to call the film unoriginal, Ice Age does suffer somewhat because of this. But whoever's idea it was to cast Hollywood misfit John Leguizamo as the idiotic Sid deserves a firm pat on the back. He is the comic relief to the film, and if mishandled could have come across as annoying, yet Leguizamo's voice (coming across as Louis Spence crossed with Mort from Family Guy) and some impressive facial capturing makes him a very funny and endearing character. And every time the story seems to be heading into predictable territory (which is does often), a clever running joke involving Scrat, a sabre-toothed squirrel, trying to smuggle an acorn to be frequently interrupted, makes the film fun again. Hardly anything breakthrough, but there's much fun to be had and I will be watching the sequels.


Directed by: Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha
Voices: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Goran Visnjic, Jack Black, Cedric The Entertainer
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie