Ice Age

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.”