I'm Reviewing This As A Film, Not A "Kid's Movie"

Rating: 4/10 (14 April 2006)

I'm sure that the majority of people who are voting on here and who viewed the film are either young children or the parents of young children. I'm not here to criticize you or to act like this movie was anything more than it was supposed to be: a sequel to a kid's movie.
With that said, the film is far inferior (as expected with sequels, especially of this nature) to the original. The original was a cool concept (honest to God no pun intended) with a great cast of characters and a very tight, easy to follow plot for children. Not that kids need a plot really. This film had more characters than could possibly fit in such a simple film and to be honest many of them were annoying. Really annoying.
As expected, the acorn-hungry rat (his name escapes me) makes a return. This time, thankfully, he gets more screen time and many times becomes the comic relief in between sleep-inducing doses of the substanceless plot.
Reread the first paragraph again if needed.
One thing that startled me about this film was the somewhat out of place grim moments (in as close as a scary movie moment as a film like this can have, a turtlesque creature is devoured while going for an innocent swim) and the low brow sex humor between Manny and Ellie. There isn't really a purpose in trying to tie in adult themes to this sort of movie. The adults are going anyway because kids don't go to movies by themselves. Is there really a point in having two talking mammoths get into a debate about sex? Are you serious? So to sum up: obviously an uninspired attempt to mooch more cash off of the profits of the original Ice Age. As long as 3d talking animals are making money, there will continue to be more films that include them.
Go if you have kids or if you LOVED the original. Otherwise, just download the parts with the acorn and the rat.