What do Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary and Will Arnett all have in common? They are all actors struggling to find work. Coincidentally enough, they all agreed to voice the characters of Ice Age 2, perhaps in an effort to help breathe life into a lifeless script that even Jay Leno couldn't revive. It's certainly no Toy Story 2, and when compared to Shrek's spectacular sequel, Ice Age: The Meltdown is left panting in the dust.
Compared to the first Ice Age, this sequel offers sharper animation and more, albeit cheaper, laughs. The writing, as witty as it may be, still needs fine-tuning and places this animated adventure, unfortunately, in the minor leagues.
The premise rests on an already tender political issue -- global warming. Sid the sloth, Manny the mammoth and Diego the saber-tooth return with a cast of wacky characters (who fail to charm) as the ice of the conveniently-placed ice damn begins to melt and threaten the existence of their bestial, utopian water garden.
On the exodus to drier land and to the alleged Ark which will save the animals from the flood (how original), the group encounters a band of possums, one of which, Ellie, is actually a mammoth with an identity crisis (Queen Latifah). Sid, always the philosopher of the group, is quick to remind Manny that he is the only mammoth left on earth with songs like "if your species has expired clap your hands" and "hey ho, what's that sound, all the mammoths are in the ground." Manny's depression foreshadows the predictable boy-hates-girl-hates-boy relationship that soon blossoms into true love with Ellie. The audience should be glad for the clichéd romance because in actual prehistoric times, the larger mammoth would be more likely to take his mate and procreate by force.
All in all, this plot is uninspired and strained. By the end, all that can be said for our heroes is that the tiger learns to swim, the mammoth falls in love and the sloth is still a sloth. Sure the ice age is coming to an end, which is cause for much rejoicing, but there's not much more to the story.
Suffice it to say, the photo-realistic animation has improved. It will get old if they make a third movie, but the water and ice imagery does catch the eye. Not to mention, kids will be fully occupied by the cornucopia of slapstick humor. Animals are clobbered by tree trunks, Sid keeps falling into holes and those pesky possums play all sorts of practical jokes. The viewer needs to keep in mind that this is a children's movie, after all.
The tragic flaw of The Meltdown, however, is that it fails to sell to adults. Any successful computer animated film should target mature audiences as well, either with sexual innuendo, subtle pop culture mockery or political satire.
So, if the plot is boring, the writing sub-par and actors can only do so much, then what keeps your eyelids from closing? The answer is a loveable squirrel and his acorn.
The producers must have realized that Scrat, the squirrel-rat hybrid, was the only thing going for them, giving him five cameos that are in absolutely no way related to the story line. Whether he is clawing up an ice wall with his tongue, losing his breath in sub-arctic waters or pole vaulting across an icy abyss, Scrat will have you falling out of your chair. If for any other reason they decide to make a third movie, let's hope that it's called "Bronze Age: The Quest for the Acorn." Otherwise, Ice Age: The Meltdown has nothing else going for it.
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