Ice Age
When Animals Laugh-Track
Rico is my neighbor, and Rico is a curmudgeon. Rico is a bulldog, and Rico barks at me no matter what I do. Every time I walk by Rico, I say hello, try to be friends, but Rico will have none of it. Rico is steadfastly committed to being unhappy and standoffish. Rico is my neighbor, and Rico is a curmudgeon.
Rico would not appreciate Ice Age, even if he could afford to buy a ticket. Ice Age is not a movie for curmudgeons. Ice Age is one of those movies that doesn’t want anybody, even the curmudgeons in the audience, to dislike it. If Ice Age was a character in another movie, it would be Roger Rabbit, eternally asking Eddie Valiant why he’s such a sourpuss. Ice Age is perky, bouncy, sentimental, eager to please, and everything that curmudgeons like Rico and me don’t like in movies.
Ice Age has two curmudgeons as characters, and predictably spends most of its time trying to talk those characters out of their attitudes. Ray Romano is the voice of Manfred, a misanthropic wooly mammoth, who spends half the movie saying the Curmudgeon’s Motto: “Leave. Me. Alone.” Romano here is called on to deliver his trademark whiny schtick mixed in with snide, smart aleck comments; it’s a part that plays to his strengths, if nothing else. This works very well on television, come to think of it, mostly because everyone else on his TV show is more miserable than he is. Here, the only place he can go with his character is to give into the movie’s sentimentality and round off his sharp edges, so he’s only half as funny as he ought to be.
If Romano is not as sharp as he should be, Denis Leary is practically narcoleptic by comparison. Casting Leary as the conniving sabretooth tiger was brilliant, but he doesn’t ever get the chance to be really, really bad. (The Ref is one of the best movies of the 1990’s; check it out.) Leary gets to say nasty things in a mean snarl, but he ends up spending a fair amount of his time playing peekaboo with the movie’s requisite endangered tot.
The third character in the mix is John Leguizamo playing Sid the Sloth, and (it pains me to say this) he is not nearly as annoying as you might think he is. He’s the cruise director on this little jaunt, and serves to balance out the movie’s depressive and mean-spirited tendencies. He’d be the perfect class clown for Ice Age, were it not for a little hard-luck cartoon squirrel that steals the show (and is the best tribute to the late, great Chuck Jones you’ll likely to see this year).
This is my analysis, however, I realize that it isn’t relevant for most purposes, so I’ve included some information that should be more helpful:
- Is it funny? It has its moments. The squirrel is very funny, likewise a scene in an ice cave involving things frozen. And the last line is a hoot.
- How is the animation? Perfectly servicable computer-generated stuff, not quite Pixar quality, but that’s an impossibly high standard.
- Will the kids like it? I don’t see why not, unless they are very young. I would balance Ice Age out with a good dose of the Discovery Channel so that they can see what predators really do, though.
- Is it cute? Yes.
- Is it adorable? Aggressively so.
- Is it just precious? Oh, yeah.
- Is it just totally oontsy-boontsy wiggly-woo cutesy-wootsy? Stop that.
You can see my point. Ice Age is very well done, entertaining, and fun, and it’s probably worth your time. Curmudgeons like me and my neighbor Rico will resent its attempts to cheer us up, but then you know what we’re like.