You can tell how much I liked "Ice Age" by this little nugget; flying back from a holiday a couple of years back, I watched this (again) in a Portuguese dub and "Daddy Day Care" in English. The latter was by far the more painful experience.
The trouble is, the first film was so self-contained it's hard to see how they could have gotten a sequel out of it, and "Ice Age: The Meltdown," though not really deserving to be dubbed "Ice Age: The Letdown," is indeed a step down from the first one. The animation is, if anything, better this time around (and conclusive proof that it's a lot easier to animate water than it used to be); it's the story that's the problem... this time around there isn't much of one, and the story and characters were a major part of what made "Ice Age" work - Sid and Diego are sidelined here in favour of Manfred's worrying about his being the last mammoth on Earth (a feeling the first movie handled far more movingly in the cave drawings scene than in this entire flick), with Diego's fear of water seemingly thrown in when the writers remember they have to do something with him.
We won't talk about Sid being the Fire King. Or most of the songs.
The movie also fudges a bit with the thawed-out predators pursuing our heroes on their journey to escape the flood; even though they actually do kill one of the animals they never really emerge as much of a threat (compare them to Sharptooth in "The Land Before Time," with which this shares the basic premise) - and when you think about it, not since "Casper" has a film aimed so much at younger viewers had such an obsession with death, what with one key scene involving a deceased mammoth and the threat of extinction looming over all their heads. And frankly, the most important major characters introduced - Ellie, The Mammoth Who Thought She Was A Possum (emphasised because it sounds like the kind of "The Wonderful World Of Disney" episodes I always used to hate as a boy - and as a man, come to think of it) and her genuine possum brothers - are all really, really irritating.
However, there's still a lot of entertainment here. Sid, Manny and especially Diego remain engaging, and the vulture voiced by Will "Gob Bluth" Arnett really deserved more time; John Powell's score is one of his better efforts (although I still prefer David Newman's work on the first film - pity he didn't return); and Scrat has considerably less difficulty stealing the movie than he has in hanging on to his nut (I shamelessly confess to being more gripped by his travails than by the main story). So, not quite up to the first film or "Robots" but still far superior to yer garden variety DreamWorks.
One thing though - like "Robots," the UK release version of "Ice Age: The Meltdown" has a tacked-on pop song from a British artist. While I didn't like how it turned out there, it's even worse here, with most of Powell's end credit score suite junked in favour of a chronically out-of-place ditty from the talentless ex-boyband oaf that is Lee Ryan - who also redubs a character in the movie - and said aural plague isn't even on the soundtrack album. (Thank goodness, or better yet thank Varese Sarabande.) Why they felt the need to do this, I do not understand. At least with "Robots" they got someone who wasn't crap...
The trouble is, the first film was so self-contained it's hard to see how they could have gotten a sequel out of it, and "Ice Age: The Meltdown," though not really deserving to be dubbed "Ice Age: The Letdown," is indeed a step down from the first one. The animation is, if anything, better this time around (and conclusive proof that it's a lot easier to animate water than it used to be); it's the story that's the problem... this time around there isn't much of one, and the story and characters were a major part of what made "Ice Age" work - Sid and Diego are sidelined here in favour of Manfred's worrying about his being the last mammoth on Earth (a feeling the first movie handled far more movingly in the cave drawings scene than in this entire flick), with Diego's fear of water seemingly thrown in when the writers remember they have to do something with him.
We won't talk about Sid being the Fire King. Or most of the songs.
The movie also fudges a bit with the thawed-out predators pursuing our heroes on their journey to escape the flood; even though they actually do kill one of the animals they never really emerge as much of a threat (compare them to Sharptooth in "The Land Before Time," with which this shares the basic premise) - and when you think about it, not since "Casper" has a film aimed so much at younger viewers had such an obsession with death, what with one key scene involving a deceased mammoth and the threat of extinction looming over all their heads. And frankly, the most important major characters introduced - Ellie, The Mammoth Who Thought She Was A Possum (emphasised because it sounds like the kind of "The Wonderful World Of Disney" episodes I always used to hate as a boy - and as a man, come to think of it) and her genuine possum brothers - are all really, really irritating.
However, there's still a lot of entertainment here. Sid, Manny and especially Diego remain engaging, and the vulture voiced by Will "Gob Bluth" Arnett really deserved more time; John Powell's score is one of his better efforts (although I still prefer David Newman's work on the first film - pity he didn't return); and Scrat has considerably less difficulty stealing the movie than he has in hanging on to his nut (I shamelessly confess to being more gripped by his travails than by the main story). So, not quite up to the first film or "Robots" but still far superior to yer garden variety DreamWorks.
One thing though - like "Robots," the UK release version of "Ice Age: The Meltdown" has a tacked-on pop song from a British artist. While I didn't like how it turned out there, it's even worse here, with most of Powell's end credit score suite junked in favour of a chronically out-of-place ditty from the talentless ex-boyband oaf that is Lee Ryan - who also redubs a character in the movie - and said aural plague isn't even on the soundtrack album. (Thank goodness, or better yet thank Varese Sarabande.) Why they felt the need to do this, I do not understand. At least with "Robots" they got someone who wasn't crap...