Blame it on Pixar.
Over the last few years, with films like Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, the wizards of animation have spoilt us terribly, making animated films seriously witty and intricately scripted, making us guffaw and think even as the toddlers have themselves a blast.
(Okay, maybe, historically speaking, I should have 'blamed it' on Disney, but life post-Unca Walt hasn't been a breeze for the theme park people, things crashed awfully after Aladdin and The Lion King, and it's Pixar who has finally resurrected the genre, so .)
Anyway, so we're talking about Ice Age: The Meltdown. Let me start by confessing that I was never a big fan of the original, with a simplistic, twist-less story about the little Eskimo child being fostered Mowgliistically to safety. Yet, the film had a couple of dark moments, and a complete story structure, elevated considerably by the now iconic squirrel, Scrat, in his undying hunt for the acorn.
The sequel also opens with Scrat, chasing the evasive acorn down the stiff face of a glacier, and, just when he manages to pry it out of ice, a stream of water pops out. Then another. And another. Despite his best attempts, the effort ends in failure. The implications are clear: the Ice Age is over; things are beginning to melt.
One of the problems with this frigid franchise is that its heroes lack any sort of charisma. Ray Romano plunders along as Manny the gruff mammoth, Denis Leary's Diego is an extremely sorry excuse for a sabre-toothed tiger, reduced to a mere sidekick, and John Leguizamo tries hard to bring fun to the table playing Sid the sloth but this ain't Shrek, and he's no Eddie Murphy.
Global warming forces the animals to flee, and they move en masse, trying to get out of the valley before the ice melts and they're flooded. Interestingly, there is absolutely no inter-species conflict, as they merrily march forth. But our aforementioned gang is, as usual, far behind, and, with Manny convinced he's the last mammoth on earth, they're covering ground quite gloomily.
They run into a couple of wisecracking possums, and their sister, who just happens to be a deluded mammoth. Ellie, voiced by Queen Latifah, is a character with great potential, one that could have gone beyond looking cute in well-rendered fur. The film, however, decides to focus its attention on the fur, taking computer animation up a notch while ignoring plot and characters. 'Oh look, kids, Sid fell down again! Ha Ha!'
It has its moments, of course. A pack of eloquent vultures burst into a lyrically-ravaged version of Food, Glorious Food from Oliver, the fine choreography making a powerful case for the whole film to have been a musical. It's a Disneyesque scene, standing out with great contrast against the rest of it.
The squirrel is immense. Every time he comes on screen, the stage becomes a lot more imaginative, with brilliant visual angles and an irresistible acorn-gathering attempt, one we all relate to on some level. The film becomes about these deftly executed shorts, with the rest of the story and characters merely existing to provide a frame marketers obviously decided a set of shorts wouldn't work in theatres. They might be wrong. Ice Age 3 given the runaway success this film is enjoying, this is an inevitability should be about Scrat. I'd pay to see 90 well-crafted minutes of that.
Ice Age: The Meltdown is obviously intended just for kids. If only we didn't expect a bit of fun ourselves.
Rediff rating: 
