Toon Talk: Ice Age
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With an out-of-balance reliance on the personalities voicing the characters, a lot of the jokes fail to rise above the juvenile, although there is a lot of clever word play with the story's frozen setting. The central plot suffers from a lack of clarity in the motivations of the lead threesome, resulting in lots of cute-but-cloying Three Mammals and a Baby gags, thus missing out on the opportunity for truthful Baby and the Beast moments that Monsters, Inc. was able to capture so well. The story fares better when it cranks up the action, most notably in an E-ticket trip through a glacier that sends our heroes sliding for their lives on an icy wild ride.
(c) 20th Century Fox
The animation is surprisingly impressive, surprising in the fact that the setting is mostly white. The starkness of the backgrounds, while still tactile in their realness, are countered quite well by the main character animation, especially in regards to Manfred and Sid. Aside from the obvious mastery of the animal's fur, Manfred manages to convey emotions even though his mouth is largely obscured by his trunk. And Sid's squatting waddle of a walk perfectly captures his clueless nature. The tigers come off to a lesser degree, with seemingly well-moused facial hair unbending to the wintery rigors present.
A wise move was made by not attempting to recreate reality in the human characters; they are stylized in a primitive way, reminding me of the old Puppetoons features. And while clearly not in a league with Monsters, Inc.'s Boo, the Eskimo baby (nicknamed "Pinky") still elicits the appropriate cuddliness when needed.
In the end, Ice Age thaws into a promising feature debut for Wedge and Blue Sky.
Toon Talk Rating: B-
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Toon Talk Trivia:
Denis Leary voiced the tough-talking yet tender-hearted ladybug Francis in Disney/Pixar's A Bug's Life.
Other candidates for the voices in Ice Age included James Earl Jones (The Lion King's Mufassa) as Manfred and Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Talented Mr. Ripley) as Diego.
Director Chris Wedge's first computer animation job was working on Disney's ground-breaking CGI feature, Tron.
The original script featured a female sloth named Sylvia voiced by 3rd Rock From the Sun's Kristen Johnson. But early audiences didn't warm to the character, who was relegated to the future DVD's deleted scenes section.
Coming Soon in the next Toon Talk:
I catch up on some recent collector's edition
DVDs, including Newsies and Tron.
Discuss It
Related Links
-- Kirby C. Holt
Kirby, a former Walt Disney World Resort Cast Member (and Trivia Champ), is a lifelong Disney fan and film buff. He is also an avid list maker and chronic ellipsis user ...
Took Talk: Disney Film & Video Reviews by Kirby C. Holt is posted whenever there's something new to review.
The opinions expressed by our Kirby C. Holt, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future plans of the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted March 29, 2002