Bravely avoiding the cutesy, fluffy cartoon look long favoured by animated movies since Disney set the benchmark, Ice Age gives us such peculiarly alienating creatures as a buck-toothed sloth and a miserable mammoth – so ugly that only their mothers could love ’em. They skip through a story laced with heavy-handed moralising (“Everyone needs a family!”), but spiced with witty dialogue, Denis Leary’s weary tone (as a sarky sabretooth) and the nutty squirrel Scrat. It’s not Pixar perfect, but it’s pretty damn cool.
DVD Extras:
Re-released on DVD to help hype its Fox Animation Studios stablemate, Robots, this two-disc set contains the same bunch of extras as the previous release of the movie - with the addition of a trailer for Robots, a short called Bunny and some other uninspiring bits. The biggest gimmick is Extreme Cool View, a split-screen device that runs as you watch the film throwing up interviews, production notes and other bumf... The kids should eat it up.
