Ice Age: The Meltdown 720p - (2006 Lang: English)

A Nutshell Review: Ice Age 2: The Meltdown!

Ice Age: The Meltdown is a 2006 American computer-animated comedy adventure film produced by Blue Sky Studios and released by 20th Century Fox. As the first sequel to the 2002 film Ice Age, it focuses on the herd escaping an upcoming flood, during which Manny finds love. It was directed by Carlos Saldanha, co-director of the first film, with the music composed by John Powell. The original voice cast - Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Chris Wedge - is joined by Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott and Josh Peck.

The film premiered in Belgium on March 1, 2006. It was eventually released in 70 countries, with the last release being in China, on June 9, 2006. The Meltdown received mixed critical reaction but was a box office success by earning over $660 million. Three more sequels were released - Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs in 2009, Ice Age: Continental Drift in 2012 and Ice Age: Collision Course in 2016.

In the opening scene, Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel climbs a glacier to bury his acorn, but accidentally opens a hole in it, causing water to spurt out. The world of ice is slowly melting. The creatures of the Ice Age are all shown enjoying themselves on slides and pools made by the melting ice; among them the three protagonists of the first film: Manny, Sid, and Diego. Sid opens a small day camp, where none of the younger creatures take him seriously, nor do Manny and Diego, which leaves Sid seeking a daring deed. Fast Tony, a local con artist is claiming that the earth will flood and that the bark and reeds which he sells are needed to stay alive. Manny dismisses the idea, but is distracted when he sees that Sid will try to high dive from a giant waterfall; as Manny goes with Diego to the top of the waterfall to save Sid from his act of daredevilry, suddenly the ice under Diego's feet begins breaking, causing him to bolt in fear, this also made Sid figure out that Diego is afraid of the water. The herd figure that the pleasant weather has caused the ice shelves to melt, and it is kept from destroying the valley only by the glaciers, which have formed a dam.

A lone vulture warns the animals that a giant tree can act as a boat and save them if they make it to the end of the valley within three days time, and all soon set out to find it. As the animals begin their journey, Sid sings three songs to tease Manny about Mammoths being "extinct". During the evacuation, a glacier which contains two sea reptiles from the Mesozoic era, Cretaceous and Maelstrom, breaks off.

When Manny briefly is separated from them, Diego and Sid encounter two cheeky opossums named Crash and Eddie who drive them nuts by playing Whac-A-Mole with them. Manny is still worried about being the last mammoth alive and his family, who had been killed by humans, but is surprised when he encounters Ellie, a female mammoth who believes she is an opossum and Crash and Eddie's adoptive sister. Sid invites her to tag along with the group to escape the flood, and she brings her brothers. After a dangerous encounter with Cretaceous and Maelstrom while crossing a pond, Sid prompts Diego to encourage him to admit and face his fears - Diego insists that "fear is for prey", so Sid points out that Diego is behaving as if he is the water's prey. They discover an area which Ellie recalls as the place where she was adopted. She finally realizes she is a mammoth and also expresses her suspicions about how different she was from other opossums. Despite this bonding moment with Manny, she distances herself from him when he suggests "saving their species". Ellie and Manny ultimately make up when they must co-operate to save the group when the ground cracks under their feet. Sid is kidnapped by a tribe of mini-sloths who believe Sid to be a god. Sid lights a fire for them, and believes that he has finally found respect, but they plan to sacrifice him by tossing him into a volcano. Sid narrowly escapes. The next morning, Sid tells the others his experience but none are convinced. They find a field of hot geysers, which separate Manny, Sid, and Diego from Ellie and her brothers when they argue about which way to go through it.

When the flood comes, Manny saves Ellie from drowning as she is caught in a cave (due to falling rocks), while Diego overcomes his fear of water to save Sid, Crash and Eddie from drowning. Cretaceous and Maelstrom arrive, but due to Manny's quick thinking, they are finished off by a rock which falls on them, killing them both. The other animals are at the mercy of the water currents. Meanwhile, Scrat climbs up the glacier and at the top sticks the acorn he has into the ice. This forms a crack in the glacier, which widens into a fissure, diverting the flood and saving the animals. Scrat is then washed away. In the final scene, a herd of mammoths shows up, but Manny and Ellie decide to remain together anyway, taking Sid, Diego, and the opossum brothers along. Sid encounters the mini-sloths again - they believe Sid stopped the flood and invite him to be their leader. Diego, surprised to see the mini-sloths are real, convinces Sid to stay with the others, reluctantly admitting that Sid is a vital part of their 'herd'.

The epilogue shows Scrat having a near death experience after falling into the fissure. He enters a heaven full of acorns. Suddenly, he finds himself torn away. He unhappily wakes up, having been resuscitated by Sid, who he proceeds to viciously attack.

Similar to the first Ice Age, the promotional material for the sequel was out in the theatres way in advance, and courtesy of the Scrat character too, up to its usual antics of getting to that elusive acorn. Here, Scrat opens the movie, and emulating the style of the first, he provides most of the laughs, also as an intermission from the actual scenes from the main cast.

Our gang of prehistoric animals are back - Manny the Mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the Sabre-tooth Tiger (Denis Leary). We learn that Sid has gone into the early childhood business, educating the young minds of pre-historic brats. However, I felt that this movie was somehow darker in tone than the original. While the original was one which dealt with hope, this one had its setting in extinction, disaster and death.

The valley which they live in is threatened by the melting ice, no thanks to global warming. So all the animals embark on a journey to salvation, to that rumored ark which will save them from the massive floods to come. Along the way, our trio meets up with another trio of characters, who were added to expand the cast, featuring 2 Possums Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck), and another, but female, mammoth (Queen Latifah).

Needless to say, Manny's still anti-social, and Diego can't get along with those rascal possums who get on his nerves, and Sid's the "philosopher" ever providing the laughs. Various themes like romance (hey, we got 2 mammoths here), friendship, trust, and believing in oneself to overcome one's phobia get covered. Pretty wide scope, but they manage to fit in place nicely.

The villains in this sequel are pretty nasty, besides the looming natural disaster, we have two sea creatures with nasty teeth and attitude, as well as menacing vultures ever ready to pounce on the flesh of animals who have fallen.

But it's not all that bleak. Keep a lookout too for that mad sloth song-and-dance sequence, which has potential to become the next ear worm ala Madagascar's zany "you-got-to-move-it" song. The animation is as usual, top notch, and I just can't get enough of the photo-realistic ice and water landscape.

This is one piece of animation that doesn't rely too much on sight gags, of spoofing current affairs, but one filled with more witty dialogue and kept on an even keel with its interesting storyline. Though at times it might feel clichéd, somehow it excelled in its execution.

And that makes this sequel, as enjoyable as, if not better, than the original. Recommended stuff this week!