One of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Rating: 2/10 (9 April 2006)

Ice Age 2 has got to rate as one of the worst movies that I have ever seen. It has no plot, no believable story line, no particularly likable characters, no original ideas. True, it does have some great animation and effects (the fur on Scrat is magnificent), but then I do wonder about what appear to be painted 2D backgrounds, and the colouring, which at times is reminiscent of a 1950s kids' story book.
The premise for the whole movie is unbelievably flimsy: the 'Herd' decide that they need to get to higher ground because their valley is going to flood. Not even the kids in the movie house seemed to buy that one. In fact they only seemed to buy some of the opening scenes with Scrat - if their lack of laughter elsewhere was anything to go by.
The remainder of the movie features the 'Herd' moving through ice, then land, then ice, then land to apparently get to higher ground (the fact that they move over land that has to be higher than the area from which the flood is coming does not seem a concern to the movie makers). Add to this movement through spurious landscape the bad guys that are there for no other reason than for being bad guys (apparently the impending flood is too abstract a concept for three-year-olds), the appallingly placed 'musical interludes' ('Food Glorious Food' just had to take the cake on that one!)and Manny's love interest pretending to be a possum (the most desperate attempt to squeeze a laugh out of an audience that I have seen in a long time), and you have two hours of my life that I desperately want back!
When will Hollywood be brave enough to break the formula? The annoying and not really so cute comic side kicks are just that: annoying! The hero rushing in to save the kind-of-heroic-but-not-quite heroine is hackneyed and unbelievable! And the fart jokes (miles away from the snappy, witty energy of the first movie) that weren't even funny for the three-year-old demographic - please serve me up some other form of crap!