Touch of Jungle Book and Monsters, Inc., but succeeds on its own

Rating: 6/10 (12 December 2014)

"Ice Age" is widely considered one of the best animated feature films of the 2000s and even if it is already 12 years old now, it is still certainly worth watching. It lost the Animated Oscar to Hayao Miyazaki's "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" and runs for only 75 minutes not counting the closing credits. It has a parallel to the very successful "Monsters, Inc." as the film's protagonists also spend most of the movie with carrying a little kid around that does not really belong into their world. Here it is an Eskimo baby and the saber-toothed tiger, the mammoth and the sloth go on a journey to bring it back to its parents. The voice cast is fairly unknown, no real superstars here unlike most animated films these days. The most known member may be Jack Black.
Visually, it is excellent work. The animated ice world is as nice to look at as all the creatures living in there. In terms of the story, early on it is mostly fun and a kids movie, but it gets deeper towards the end with some really emotionally investing moments. One would be the mammoth seeing the cave paintings and how he reacts to them. Another would be the ending when they reach the Eskimo tribe and give back the baby. I think they chose wisely to make this the final highlight of the film and not the dramatic tiger fight which happens before. Adds a lot of heart to the movie. Apart from that, it is interesting to see how the motivations of the trio change during the journey. The sloth wants to bring the baby back from start to finish. The mammoth really only wants to get rid of the sloth early on and develops a bond with the baby as the story continues. The tiger basically takes the enemy within role and wants to trick the other two in order to feed them to his fellows, but his motivations also change quickly.
Director Chris Wedge started his career with the Academy Award winning animated short film "Bunny" and most recently directed "Epic", which I enjoyed a lot. He seems to have a talent to take us into new worlds mostly including animals. There are 3 sequels to "Ice Age" by now, but Wedge only directed the original. He gave his voice to Scrat in the other films though. The scenes including Scrat will be especially loved by younger audiences and serve as intermissions between the main story parts. It's a pretty interesting concept, somehow like short films within a movie almost completely independent from the story. Co-director Saldanha worked also on the sequels and not too long ago on "Rio 2", a film also centered on animals, but in a completely different spot of the planet, especially in terms of the climate.
I recommend watching "Ice Age". It could almost be described as a road movie from many centuries ago and that is probably pretty unique. It has lots of humor, basically from start to finish, and heart and is worth a watch also for people who are not that interested in the animation genre.