Ice Age: The Meltdown

Bomb Rating: 

Frankly, I think when you have to resort to having Jay Leno voice a character in your animated movie, things have hit rock bottom.

I'm not sure whether to loathe this film or give it credit for actually killing off a character. No, the mammoth Manny (Ray Romano), sloth Sid (John Leguizamo), and saber-tooth tiger Diego (Denis Leary), all survive. A turtle is actually killed. Of course, I don't give a crap about turtles, but I must admit that watching the kids in the audience panic and cry and ask their parents questions they didn't want to answer was fun.

As the ice begins to melt and the animals try to escape, a turtle is eaten by some kind of horrible prehistoric fish. The death is then made into a running joke by Fast Tony (Jay Leno), who runs around with his buddy's shell. Frankly, I think when you have to resort to having Jay Leno voice a character in your animated movie, things have hit rock bottom.

This speaks to the spirit of this sequel. It doesn't expand on the characters so much as it expands along the edges of its comedy, branching out toward the risque as much as an animated film for kids will allow. The story centers on Manny and the possibility that he could be the last of his kind. He runs into Ellie (Queen Latifah), who thinks she's a possum, and the rest of the film is basically a lot of sexual innuendo between the two broken up by scenes of that squirrel thing from the trailer trying to get his nut. To me, the Freudian implications seem overpowering.

Like almost every sequel, this one is the same old tired stuff by definition. We've seen it all before. The characters are the same. The jokes are mostly the same. The enjoyment or lack thereof is the same. What is there to say about this or any film where you know exactly what you're going to get before you even step foot in the theater?

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