For this entire month, I
will be looking at “Blue Sky Studios” franchise that could have had some
promise, but just kept getting worse, the “Ice Age” franchise. Let’s take a
look at their very first film, “Ice Age,” released in 2002.
Dreamworks and Disney
might be on the entrance of breakthrough computer animated films, but within a
few years, the Fox Animation Department must have been crawling at their
well-established areas. This film represents what the yearly summer animated
films released by Disney every year used to be like. Kelsey Wyatt said in her
review, “Before they got all serious, like with their latest film, Atlantis,
what a film for the doldrums. Although they created a more than enjoyable film
with the recent release of Monsters, Inc., the sophistication of Disney's
animation departments have begun to work against the light fluffy quotient
usually present in Disney films.”
However, in “Ice Age,”
the characters have simple relationships and emotions which get the audience
invested and make viewers worry about what happens next. The computer animation
in this film won’t impress the veteran animation fan, but as a family film, “Ice
Age” gets it right in all the areas. It successfully balances humor with drama,
which isn’t always an easy thing to do, and it’s especially harder in
animation. Without live action people to look at, the filmmakers had to depend
on animation and how the actors show emotions through their voices.
The talent in this film
shows they are capable. Ray Romano (comedian famous for his sitcom, “Everybody
Loves Raymond”), John Leguizamo and Denis Leary play the uneven trio of
mastodon, a sloth and a saber tooth tiger who try to return a human child to
his own kind. These three actors are famous for their comic talents and not
only are they able to take on the humor, but they can also show the deeper emotions
needed by the script. Wyatt noted, “And those three big names are not the only
claims to fame that this picture can boast.” This film also has the talents of
Goran Visnjic, Jack Black, Cedric the Entertainer, Stephen Root and Alan Tudyk.
The excess of familiar voices in this film wasn’t distracting in any way and
were good compliment to Fox’s animation.
However, the animation
in this film isn’t perfect, but not a total restraint to this film. The
computer animation is not always the best nor the hardest it can be. Wyatt
said, “After seeing the crystal clear movie stills from Shrek and Monsters Inc.
plastered all over every issue of daily variety for the past few months, the
animation in Ice Age isn't always those two films' equal in sophistication.”
It’s not that the
characters are underdeveloped; it’s that the animation itself doesn’t look as
worked through as they should. For example, in the beginning of the film, one
of the animals accidentally causes a giant crack in a glacier. As the crack
runs down the side of the glacier, the animation looks more like the hand-drawn
animation than the computer-animation. There are a few other places where the
boundary between the clean look of computer animation and the softer look of
hand drawn animation combines.
Wyatt admitted, “Now
this failing isn't something which will break this film, considering that its
main audience is of the under ten variety. But that uneven animation shouldn't
be a bother for any but the most die-hard and experienced computer animation
fans.” The characters and the story of this film are really the reason to watch
it. Despite the story is a familiar one (people, or in this case, animals, can
get along, even if they’re not completely alike), as is the theme, the
characters, at their absolute simple level, are interesting. Whether that comes
from the talent of the actors, the animation of the artists or the story doesn’t
really matter, because the film completely is likable. The completing of the
story even goes a familiar path, like the familiarity of a Disney film from the
50s or 60s, but it’s still an enjoyable film.
Wyatt said, “In the
end, this film has an element of sincerity that makes it a light experience in
the theater whose comedy is sometimes so entertaining that the whole thing
becomes almost delirious.” This is especially noteworthy with Scrat, voiced by
Chris Wedge, running around for the majority of the film, so worried about
protecting his precious acorn. Sure, there is the required fart joke near the
beginning of the film, but that doesn’t mean the whole film is targeting toward
five-year-olds.
Wyatt said, “In fact,
this film is a textbook example of a family film that the whole family can
enjoy, it's not the type of film that includes a fat jolly purple dinosaur that
will bore the adults in the audience, and it's not a film like Shrek which has
a few too many adult oriented jokes that leave the children out of the loop.” “Ice
Age” has a good balance of story, character and animation, and overall is a
really enjoyable experience for the family. On a final note, the character of
Scrat, the animal in front of the cover, is just enough to watch this film.
As I have already
stated, this film was actually good and seemed like it would have best to leave
much alone, but if it had sequels, it could have been just as good, if not
better. However, we will get to those bad sequels later in the month, but for
this one, I definitely say see it. It’s a good movie for the whole family.
If you want to know how
bad the sequels got, stay tuned next week when I look at the first sequel in “Ice
Age Month.”
