Movie Review: Ice Age 2

The thrill is gone, too.  Two thumbs down (me & Yelena).

Ice Age 1 was fantastic. There's a new generation of computer-generated animated movies, and the bar has been set very high. Traditional animated movies also used to be visually stunning, dramatic, and funny for adults as well as children. But the last truly great American traditional animated film was the Lion King (although you could argue for Prince of Egypt). After that, Pixar picked up the baton and showed everyone that a computer-animated film could have mass appeal. Pixar set the bar very high. Dreamworks has managed to compete, and now Fox has thrown its hat in the ring as well.

The first problem is Fox seems too conscious of the competition. Pixar started a tradition of showing a short before its feature films. This hearkens back to the olden days when Disney would show Loony Toons before its feature films. Pixar's shorts have won awards. I can just imagine the conversation in a Fox board room somewhere: "They're doing it, so we have to do it too." Their short focuses on that little animal that was chasing his acorn throughout the first movie. He's still chasing it. Problem #1 with the short (does that make this Problem 1(a)? Too much law school!) is that the animation isn't impressive. Pixar always makes a point of making its shorts look cool. Fox's short looks like they just used the storyboard sketches. Problem #2 is the subject matter. That damn prehistoric squirrel chases his acorn through the entire full-length movie as well as the short. The subject either needs to be completely different (like the old man playing chess against himself before Toy Story), or at least different from the plot of the main movie (like Mater and the Ghostlight after Cars). But what's the point having the short be the same as the feature film? There were some funny moments in the movie, but they should have put it all in the short and left the main movie to the main characters.

That's the second problem with Ice Age 2: no direction. It seemed like a string of unrelated sketches. "Now we see the main 'herd.' Now we're jumping back to the squirrel. Why? Why not. Now the herd is back on ice even though they were on dry land a minute ago. But aren't they trying to flee the ice? Now there are evil fish. Why? Why not." Of course, everything gets tied together at the end. But until the last few minutes, it's nothing but a disjointed collection of random stuff. There's no unifying theme and there's no flow. Also, the timing is off. Where was the director, and where was the editor?

To be sure, the movie had its funny moments, and it had its tear-jerker moments. But because these moments popped up randomly, it seemed more like those old radio and TV shows where they had a flashing sign saying "applause" when they wanted the live audience to applaud. I expected to see a flashing neon sign saying "laugh" or "cry." I felt that the movie was tugging on my heartstrings too deliberately.

Another problem: the animation wasn't impressive. That's one of the cornerstones of a computer-animated movie: every single movie is expected to be cooler than anything you've ever seen. Pixar's Cars did it (hell, Pixar usually does it). In Ice Age 2 there were some impressive effects: the mammoth's fur was amazing, especially when it was wet near the end. But it's nothing I haven't seen before. And just like the short, the backgrounds all looked like storyboard sketches. Copying a short is easy; copying impressive visual effects is hard. The studio just wasn't willing to put in the effort.

The acting was good (you'd expect it to be, with all big-name actors), the dialogue was decent (even clever at times), and the cinematography was good as well. But everything else sucked: the directing, the editing, the computer animation, the plot, the short, even the music seemed derivative (I kept asking Yelena, "what's that music from?").
Still, Yelena & I snuggled on the couch, drank egg nog, and ate Hanukah cookies, so the evening wasn't a complete waste.