About a year ago I saw the preview trailer for this movie and couldn’t wait. You probably did too. It shows this little squirrel type animal trying to bury his acorn in the ice. Without a word, he probes and pecks trying to store his nut for the winter until he sets off a huge avalanche. It was like being transported back to my days as a six year old watching a “Roadrunner” cartoon. This thing, which is called a “scrat”, a combination of a squirrel and a rat, is a hoot. I may have ended up seeing this trailer a dozen times and like a little kid, never got tired of it. Watch the little guy’s eyes bug out as he gets in more and more trouble trying to bury his food. Watch him stick his foot out or drop his nose to the ground to “test” out an idea. And the two or three noises he makes as things go awry. Classic stuff!
Of course, since this was the whole preview, it made me wonder what the entire movie would be about. Too bad “scrat” is not a real big part of it. In fact, the opening scene of “Ice Age” is identical to the trailer. But then there’s over an hour to fill and much of that is taken up by the story of three very different animals “teaming” up for a cause.
The team is made up of a wooly mammoth named Manny, voiced by Ray Romano, a sloth named Sid whose voiced by John Leguizamo, and a sabre-toothed tiger named Diego. The voice of Diego belongs to Dennis Leary. Manny is big and grumpy and sarcastic and needs a visit to Oprah to work through some family related issues. Sid is a talkative dope that most would like to avoid, and Diego is actually up to no good. The cause they are involved in is to bring a lost human baby back to its tribe. Diego, however, is supposed to instead lead the mammoth and the sloth to their demise so his pack of tiger friends can grab and slaughter the baby. Nice kid’s movie, isn’t it?
Oh, I guess I haven’t mentioned that all of this takes place as the ice age is taking over the earth’s climate. I’ll give you that much since it is the title after all. But I should tell you that people and animals do die in this movie. Sort of reminded me of that “Bambi’ problem. It’s all done off camera but I think if you’re protective of some of your young ones you ought to know that.
As for the entertainment value of this movie, it’s not bad. There are some laughs as annoying Sid and cranky Manny bond, but I can’t say it’s that funny. You’ll smile or you’ll just ignore some of the lines, but once in a while you’ll notice something a few levels above on the humor scale. This movie is barely seventy- five minutes long, so I doubt you’ll be bored. There’s one scene where the group ends up sliding it’s way through icy caves and tunnels that definitely hold your attention. Even “scrat” ends up joining in the adventure. Thanks to sequences like this, I can even forgive the “political correctness” of the some of the story line, which points out that the real evil is man who hunts the poor mammoths and tigers down with his nasty spears.
But here’s the bottom line for me on this movie. “Scrat” does the opening scene which I mentioned was the preview trailer, and he gets the last scene which I won’t tell you much about except to say is was also big time funny. It reminded me that I missed this type of humor too much throughout this movie. I’m not sure you can build a whole story around this guy, but I wouldn’t mind them trying. He steals the show and that’s too bad for the rest of these guys, but that’s what happened to me. I give “Ice Age” a “7.0”, but “Scrat” gets a “9.0”.
