Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)

Genre

Action | Adventure | Animation

Director

Carlos Saldanha

Country

USA

Voice Cast

Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Chris Wedge, Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Will Arnett, Jay Leno, Tom Fahn, Alex Sullivan, Alan Tudyk, Clea Lewis

Storyline

When the valley where they live is threatened by the melt of the surrounding ice, Manny (Ray Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo) and Diego (Denis Leary) join the other animals for a journey to high ground, and discover that Manny is not the last of the mammoths.

Opinion

After four years of hibernation, the most weird animal trio ever came back with "Ice Age: The Meltdown", a funny and enjoyable adventure film that is also a good sequel.

Once again, the plot is quite simple and it rather serves as a pretext to show another adventure starring the same trio of the first time, the talkative sloth Sid, the grumpy mammoth Manny and the loyal sabertooth tiger Diego. New characters also arrive: Ellie, a female mammoth who believe she is a possum, and Crash, and Eddie, her two possum brothers, and they make the storyline much more intriguing.

Scrat has a lot more screen time, and, even though I'm probably one of the few that find Scrat an utterly annoying little animal, and despite the fact that its sub-plot has little to do with the rest of the film, it does have two purpose, make people laugh - which works beautifully - and deliver a message without even talking. What's the message? A pretty common one in kid movies, we should not give up easily.

Between a gag and other, in addition to the central theme of friendship, the film also deals with overcoming fears in the face of danger.

Once again, the animation is beautiful, from every single character to the breathtaking landscapes. And the voice cast once again deliver great performances - I particularly enjoyed Queen Latifah's as Ellie.