Wonderful visuals ... and not bad in other respects, either

Rating: Null/10 (29 March 2002)

I went to see this because I wanted a real cartoon - you know, the kind animated by pencil rather than keyboard - and it was the only plausible substitute available. It's a far better substitute than I'd dared hope.
The title says it all: it's an ice age. We watch animals migrate away from the ice. That's the point to the film; there is no other. There IS, admittedly, also a story, and don't believe anyone who tells you it's not a good story; if there's a problem with it, it lies not with its inherent quality but with the fact that it feels at times like an intrusion - something which takes valuable time away from the character-based vignettes about odd-looking mammals travelling through the frozen landscape. But not so much time that we have any grounds for being impatient.
All the animals (the humans being a trivial exception) are animated well, simply but convincingly. Essentially they're the three-dimensional counterparts of the Coyote and the Roadrunner, the various beasts developed by Jack Hannah in the inspired cartoons he directed at Disney ... and more recent animals, too, like the raccoon in "Pocahontas" or the enchanted llama in "The Emperor's New Groove". The computer animators have really learnt something from their pen-and-paper colleagues. About time! Or maybe this film was animated by people who USED to animate by hand but left what they took to be a sinking ship, in which case the gain comes at too high a price.
"Ice Age" has the best art direction of the ten computer animated film ever released, better even than "Monsters, Inc." At first I though it was just the ice, that the mere fact that everything HAD to be the colour of snow made it virtually impossible to duplicate the ugly, garish, cluttered mishmash of "Shrek" (or "Jimmy Neutron", a film I'm admittedly judging from the trailer - but doesn't it look like the ghastliest things ever made?). But this is uncharitable. Many scenes take place on land on which snow has not yet fallen, and the art direction is STILL superb; everything MATCHES the snow, stylised in the same artful way. And the creatures match the background. It's not just that they're "drawn" similarly; the main point is that they all look and move and are framed relative to other things as though they belong here. Only three computer-animated features have art direction that's even worth mentioning (except perhaps to complain about): "Toy Story 2", "Monsters, Inc." and now "Ice Age". Each is visually better than the last. "Ice Age" may not be as inspired overall - it's certainly not as deep - as the two Pixar movies, and perhaps some of the jokes in the first half fall flat. "Monsters, Inc." was a masterpiece; so (to take a recent example of something traditionally animated) was "The Emperor's New Groove". "Ice Age" isn't. But it's still the real deal; a good, sincere movie with something real to offer. It's not a "substitute" anything.