In spite of the title, this is very much a warm film; whether it's one for the ages is another matter, but it's affirming and exciting enough to recommend.

Rating: 6/10 (17 September 2011)

Ice Age is a three way buddy pic set in the pre-prehistoric era unfolding as a modern day road movie of sorts, in spite of taking place at a time many millennia before roads would even exist; a neat comedy driven by the rocky relationships between a trio of hapless creatures of ancient times gone by running on some good interplay and wily writing as we observe them negate a long, relatively hostile, terrain rife with the elements; sight gags and the fleeting pop culture reference. The film, a sort of two way riff on the likes of Shrek and Monter's Inc., is a workable and often exciting excursion into animation; made more impacting by the real lack of this era in planet Earth's long existence ever really being put to screen, particularly in the animated format. Where Ice Age is nothing above and beyond, it is quaint and timely; its attitude to what it essentially represents never more than evident during a more-dramatic-than-we-expect denouement, something which sees directors Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha exude an offbeat idea that primitive humans and plentiful mammals may actually co-exist peacefully in this unremitting world of food-chains and strife â€“ it is somewhat nonsensical, and more than fanciful, but you've oddly swayed with it.
The film begins with a short skit, within which we observe a small squirrel-like character speaking to us in agonised squeaks and offering us pained reactions to his pratfalls. His unfortunate exploits linked to never quite knowing what to do with a small nut he's managed to get his hands on are what follows, with an attempted burying of it in the snow causing a huge rift in the ground, a rift formulating into a crack and then causing a huge glazier to break off seemingly dooming all the creatures within the realms of this world. Those of whom it will affect the most dwell in the valleys and the forests below this mountainous locale; here, a large but seemingly downcast mammoth named Manfred (Romano) is, in a literal sense, heading counter to the tide as he walks against the mass exodus of animals fleeing this glacier rift and looming ice age. It isn't long until he bumps into Sid, or rather Sid bumps into him; a character who has to be one of the more talkative sloths ever devised and of whom is voiced by John Leguizamo - Sid's scenario seeing him left behind by that of his close family prior to disembarkment: for reasons that become clearer. The dynamic of Sid and Manfred's relationship feeds off the animated film of 2001 of equally good value in Shrek; specifically, Eddie Murphy's Donkey character literally running into that of the hulking titular lead following a mix up with those out to get at him: the nature of their later bond a clear riff on the said pairing in their "little-and-large" double act plus easily wound up nature clashing with the smaller element of the pairing's talkative nature.
Away from these proceedings lie a pack of sabre tooth tigers led by that of Soto (Visnjic), who employs the services of one of his more competent aides, Diego (Leary), to swipe an infant from a camp of early-human Neanderthals amidst the chaos of a surprise attack; early-human Neanderthals of whom look suspiciously drawn from 1995's Pocahontas and its respective homo-sapiens. Soto has preordained this attack out of spite for the mass slaughters implemented upon the tiger clan that have transpired at the discretion of the Neanderthals. The tigers, with their predominantly Hispanic sounding Christian names and evident subscription to gang culture, allude to a greater extent of misrepresentation, but a misrepresentation of which isn't prominent enough to sag the film into a messy trough of any kind. Indeed, Soto puts it very clearly to the rest of us that it is a guided idea born out of a desire for retribution; a veering of the characters away from stock villainy sort and perhaps doing well to draw the more younger members of the targeted audience into identifying the politics of the two sides before having them take their own stance.
The raid is a success but Diego looses the baby down a nearby river, only for it to end up in the laps of Manfred and Sid further on down the stretch of water; Diego's angling for it back clashing with Manfred's ignorance out of Diego's true intent as he strives to return it to the humans. Principally, the duality in Manfred and Diego's attitudes towards the primitive humans in regards to specific tragedies that have come to affect either their lives or existences is what's at the forefront here; later revelations linked to Manfred reveal certain truths that do not do enough to sway him onto the ill-guided tract of blood-lust and destruction that drove Diego pre-crucible. What unfolds is an often exciting, albeit reasonably routine, adventure film about these grossly differing animals connecting and repelling at various stages, with a neat framework concluding with quaint epiphanies we do not necessarily have much of a problem with no matter how channelled they may be. The film has fun with that post modern approach to animation contemporary American animations usually feed off, a tract reading something along the lines of "real life in a world not entirely true to life"; the stopping for a mock-level crossing occurring shortly after we're made aware of the trio's travelling ought to resemble a holidaying family separate examples of this. We enjoy the film's sense of adventure, its grandiose feel in spite of it being a little over 80-odd minutes in length, as well as its core politic pitched solely towards its target demographic that teamwork persistently wins out in the end, and that when prejudices and such are put aside, things can more often than not come off for the much better.