Grade:  C+

Director:  Carlos Saldanha, Chris Wedge		Released:  March 2002
Writer:  Michael J. Wilson, Michael Berg		MPAA Rating:  PG
Players:  Blue Sky Studios, Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary		Running time:  81 minutes

Ratings System

Ice Age is cute.  A lot of the best comedy was in the trailers, though, so I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't more to surprise me in the rest of the movie.  This animated film is geared toward the same audience as Monsters, Inc., I think I like Monsters, Inc. a little bit more than Ice Age.  However, I commend Blue Sky on their technical skill; the animation is fantastic.

The story is nice, but I feel that the characters were mostly lifted right out of several other animated films.  Sid is Donkey from Shrek, Diego is Scar from The Lion King, and Manfred is your typical reluctant champion, like Shrek or Z-4195 from Antz.

Being a fan of the Warner Brothers/Chuck Jones school of animation, there is a big part of me that wishes they had done the whole film without dialog, road-runner style.  They did put a Wile E. Coyote in this picture, in the form of Scrat, who runs around trying to bury his acorn.  Scrat is the most entertaining part of the film, I think the rest of the film would have worked just as well with all of the characters having no voices.  Now that would have been a special achievement.  That could have elevated it from family film, to legendary animated classic.

- crocoPuffs