Let's review, shall we...Ice Age: The Meltdown...
Sequel. PG movie. School Holidays.
While this was not the worst idea known to man, it could possibly have been better. And that goes for the timing of seeing this movie as well as the movie itself.
I like the original Ice Age... it's cute and sweet and has a good story and is something we haven't seen before (the time period... mammoths and mammals as opposed to the dinosaurs)...
The sequel... well, they didn't exactly strain any braincells trying to make it better than the original.
It was also fairly obvious that they actually ran out of real story, because between "real" scenes, they would keep coming back to Scrat (the prehistoric squirrel thing in the poster up there) and having sometimes quite lengthy scenes with him. Don't get me wrong, some of his scenes are actually really funny... especially the first couple... but after I while I just kind of though "yeah, Scrat, we get it... lets get back to the story"... okay, I didn't think it at the time, but I'm thinking it now.
Other than the Scrat bits, I have to say that probably the best two sequences were the two "musical numbers"... the mini-sloths... and the vultures. Although I really enjoyed the vulture sequence, I actually did think at the time... "Why are we suddenly having a musical number?"... it just seemed a little tacked on. Funny... but kind of like padding. A bit like the "villains" of the story really... they will probably scare the pants off little kids, but they were almost completely unnecessary, and also felt a little like padding or that they had been tacked on.
I can't make my mind up whether the quality of the CG was better or worse than the original... I probably should have original today so I had something to compare it to, but, alas, I didn't. The sequel did seem both more advanced and less "polished"... some of the dry fur effects on the mammoths were really good... especially the short soft fur on Manny's trunk, that looked completely touchable... but at the same time, the wet fur just ended up looking a little plastic.
And the "big water effect" towards the end of the movie was just hideous... once the water had stopped splashing around, the surface of it was perfect, but the big falling water shot, forget it... train wreck.
In the end, it was what it was... but unfortunately it didn't start out being a whole lot in the first place. It did have it's moments though.
yani's rating: 2 mini-sloths out of 5
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