Stone Age Not Ice Age

Rating: Null/10 (21 March 2002)

Let's be honest 70% of the people going to see this movie will be Star Wars fans trying to catch a glimpse of the Episode 2 Trailer "The Clone War". Part of the motivation for myself was certainly that dubious pleasure, but also I'd been suckered by the rather amusing trailers. If only the movie had been as funny as the trailers !
The running gag throughout the film of the squirrel and the nut was great, but this sort of thing belonged in a Looney Tune NOT a top line sophisticated CGI animated feature. To say that this was THE funniest bit of the film is a sad indictment of the state of FOX's animated features. Critics hated "Titan AE", and yet that was so much more a better film pitched at just the right level.
"Ice Age" had none of the knowing humour of "Shrek", or the wide appeal of "Monster Inc". It was more of a throwback to the Disney flicks of the late 60s/early 70s had banal characters going on a quest against a silkily sly enemy ie "The Jungle Book".
Manfred, Sid, and Diego were fairly well characterised 'road' buddies with their fair share of good lines a piece, but nothing from the script stuck in my head after viewing. There was no 'Do you think he's compensating for something' style wit here !
The movie's two saving graces (apart from the squirrel) were the stand out ice cavern rollercoaster ride sequence, and Dodo extinction gag. The ice cavern (with sly asides to the opening scene in 'The X-Files' movie), was an exciting, funny and well animated (ice that looks like ice-what will they think of next !!!) scene. The Dodo bit starring suicidal dodos (why they became extinct, geddit ??!) was probably the only 'adult' appealing bit in the feature. A neat touch, dodos scrambling over each other unwittingly going to their deaths !
So with all it's unsophisticated humour kids will probably lap this film up, but I feel their attention spans will be tried at times as mine certainly was-and the whole film was only about 85 minutes long !
Next time FOX forget the cutesy kid, forget the iritating sloth, and forget plagarising past animated epics from Disney, and Warner. The future was 'Titan AE' with a bit of tweaking required...