"Ice Age" is one of the cartoon movies ever produced by Blue Sky Studios and released in 2002 as the company's first. We are introduced to the main characters: a squirrel named Scrat (voiced by Chris Wedge, AND PLEASE NOTE: the sound of Scrat's screams is the sound of Tom's screams from the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons), a woolly mammoth named Manny (voiced by Ray Romano of "Everybody Loves Raymond"), a sloth named Sid (voiced by John Leguizamo of "Titan A. E."), and a saber toothed tiger named Diego (voiced by Denis Leary of Pixar's "A Bug's Life").

The movie opens with Scrat trying to bury an acorn and right after that, he caused an avalanche. We then see a herd going south for the coming Ice Age (except for Manny, who is going the other way looking for other mammoths that looked like him). Sid comes out of his cave yawning, and saw that his family abandoned him. He then pays toll with some aardvarks. Unfortunately, he gets pursued by Sylvia (voiced by Kirsten Johnston of "3rd Rock from the Sun"), a female orange sloth, who wants Sid to go migrating with her. Sid eventually teams up with Manny, and they became friends.

Meanwhile, nearby a human tribe, Soto (voiced by Goran Visnjic), an evil saber toothed tiger, wants revenge against the tribe's leader for wiping out half of his pack just by stealing his infant son, Roshan, away from him. In the morning, he, Diego, and Soto's henchmen, Lenny (voiced by Alan Tudyk), Oscar (voiced by Diedrich Bader), and Zeke (voiced by Jack Black) attacked the tribe, but the leader's wife escaped with Roshan and gave him to Manny and Sid to look after. Eventually, Diego joins them, and went on a journey to return Roshan back to his tribe, who are also looking for him as well. Relax and watch the rest of the movie and find out, okay? Besides Manny, Sid, Diego, Scrat, Sylvia, and Roshan, the supporting characters in there including a pack of wolves that Roshan's tribe are using, and not to mention a fat female purple sloth named Jennifer (voiced by Jane Krakowski), and a skinny female yellow sloth named Rachel (voiced by Lorri Bagley), to whom Sid shows them Roshan as they relax in a tar pit. Incidentally, the two rhinos, Carl (voiced by Cedric The Entertainer of PDI's "Madagascar"), and Frank (voiced by Stephen Root of Pixar's "Finding Nemo"), who go after Sid for ruining their meal and confront Manny on a cliff, are simple minor characters. Same went for the dodos, who are using melons as their food supply.

The gags in this movie are very funny. For instance, Manny talks through his trunk saying, "I'M NOT GOING!" When Jennifer and Rachel are out of the tar pit, Sid asks Jennifer "What do you say if we jump into the gene pool and see what happens?" Jennifer then responds to him, "What do you say if you go jump into the TAR PIT!?" Rachel also then kicks Sid in the waist. Sylvia sees Diego holding Sid by the neck with his teeth, then she asks Sid if he's holding his breath, tells Diego to eat him, and promptly walks off.

Since "Ice Age" is not only a success, but it has 2 sequels: the first one was "Ice Age: The Meltdown", which was released in 2006, and the other was "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs", which is going to be releasing next year. I can hardly die waiting to see what "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" will be like.

Sentiment: positive