Taking the stink out of extinction

With summer here and school out, movie time means family fare is a constant concern. With three boys whose ages range from 14 down to seven, it’s not always a simple feat finding films that all three will enjoy – not to mention how I’ll fare. While my eldest enjoyed V for Vendetta the previous week, my two younger boys had on their "sad faces" when they had to be left home.

So it was a treat to have the animated film Ice Age 2: The Meltdown hit the screens. For that "eternal kid" in me, the first Ice Age was a real joy. While I am always wary of "franchise" films (you know, where the success of the first film means an endless stream of Part 2’s to Part 3’s, and merchandise galore), my boys are such suckers for them, and one can only hope for the best.

Fortunately for us, Ice Age 2 relies on story and plot above everything else, with a wealth of detail. You bring the wonderful trio of wooly mammoth (Manny), sloth (Sid), and sabre-toothed tiger (Diego) back, have Scratch scenes (the prehistoric squirrel) running as links throughout the film, and introduce Ellie, a female mammoth, and have our characters facing drastic climatic changes – the beginnings of the end of the Ice Age – and presto! A film that truly takes the "stink out of extinction"!

Ray Romano, John Leguziamo and Dennis Leary all reprise the voices of Manny, Sid and Diego respectively, while Queen Latifah provides Ellie her sassy personality-plus. A delightful twist in the tale is to have Ellie as a wooly mammoth with a pronounced identity crisis. She thinks she’s a possum!

Abandoned as a calf, Ellie stumbled upon an icy oasis where she was adopted by a possum who had two baby male possums. That Manny has his own crisis of thinking himself as the last surviving mammoth, and chances upon Ellie who refuses to believe she is a mammoth, makes for some wonderful heart-tugging yet hilarious scenes. Ellie’s brothers also make for some delightful moments. They are the epitome of possums as pesky rascals and the scene where Diego and Sid first encounter them is a laugh-filled spoof on that amusement arcade game where we try to knock the heads of varmints that keep popping out from various holes in the ground.

One scene that will guarantee to have your kids shrieking in delight is the one where Sid stumbles upon a tribe of miniature sloths. They "claim" him as their Fire King, ready to ape anything he does – the punchline being that as Fire King, the tribe wants to sacrifice him in order to appease the gods and bring good weather back.

When our intrepid trio begins to flag behind the procession of animals escaping the valley, which threatens to become flooded thanks to ice melting, we have a gang of sardonic vultures. They break into an appropriate rendition of Food, Glorious Food from the musical Oliver! and end the song with dance (or flying) steps reminiscent of those 1930’s Busby Berkeley extravaganzas.

The animation is topnotch. Given the major role elements like water and ice play in this film, it’s wonderful to see the dynamic depiction of these elements throughout the film. Scratch finding himself under the ice in his endless quest for the acorn had my seven-year-old at the edge of his seat, laughing his head off. The use of a leaf being buffeted by the wind till it gently lands on water is another example of "poetry in animation." There are links to the classic Fantasia in these sequences, but it’s interesting to note how all this is utilized to drive forward the film’s story, rather than being the focus of these scenes.

As can be expected, themes like friendship, identity and compassion are all given their humorous "spins," providing the film with a moral center my boys appreciated. On our way home, I joked with my boys on what moral or lesson they got from the film, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the life-affirming lessons embedded in the film did not escape them.

Ice Age 2 is a real enjoyable way to spend some 90 minutes with your kids. It’s an Ice Age heart that won’t find warmth aplenty while being entertained.