A wooly mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger and a sloth battle their way through blasting blizzards, across mountains of ice and through frozen caves to return a human baby to his tribe.
This odd trio on their unlikely quest are the stars of Fox Entertainment's new computer-animated flick, "Ice Age," which opened in theaters this past weekend. The film, directed by Chris Wedge, features the voices of funny guys Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and the verbally belligerent Denis Leary.
Produced by Blue Sky Studios, "Ice Age" takes place during a prehistoric migration south, a flee from encroaching ice. How do they know it's an ice age?
"Because of all the ice," said one passing creature in the opening, setting the tone for the remainder of the film.
This adventure stars a depressed wooly mammoth (Romano), a lisping sloth (Leguizamo), a saber-toothed tiger with an ulterior motive (Leary), and a reoccurring rat-of-a-squirrel and his precious acorn that opens the first 10 minutes of the flick.
The squirrel functions as a story all its own, exhibiting folly after folly throughout the film in failed attempts to plant this acorn in the frozen earth.
Manny the mammoth and Sid the sloth trek against the migration, protecting an abandoned human baby, with the hopes of returning "the pink thing" to its tribe. Diego the saber is nominated to lead the group through the inclement weather.
At one point, Manny saves Diego's life, proposing an underlying message, "that's what you do in a herd." Sid, who provides the comic relief throughout the film, cuts the emotion with a comedic observation, "I don't know about you guys, but this is the weirdest herd I ever saw." It was a good change of emotion.
The travels of these three prehistoric creatures evolve into a beautiful dynamic story and each character exhibits emotional growth by the end of the journey. As for the determined little squirrel, he just can't catch a break, but the humor in his attempts never tires.
Jeff Simon said in the Buffalo News' Gusto that "Ice Age" is "laugh-out-loud funny," and he was right. The voices for these characters were masterfully chosen and the script is consistently clever and witty. Almost too clever for a "children's movie," however, since the younger audience probably won't catch the subtler humor.
This was clear when few people in the audience snickered at the subtle remarks, but when Sid fell victim to a slapstick "rake-in-the-face" routine the theater exploded with exaggerated "ha-ha" laughs.
This seems to be the direction of many animated films recently. Children can certainly be entertained with the funny voices and fly antics, but only adults can truly appreciate the film's intelligence and wit.
