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Ice Age: The Meltdown

By Jay Carr

Drip, drip, drip. That's "Ice Age: The Meltdown." Thought went into that title. Obviously, the intention was to avoid the dreaded "2." If only as much thought went into putting a story and more animated ideas under this animation. For all its digital slickness, "Ice Age: The Meltdown" is afflicted with almost terminal sequelitis.

Manny the woolly mammoth, Diego the sabre-toothed tiger and Sid the sloth are all back. But in plodding through the valley to escape with some new friends, they're mostly just spinning their wheels. Sid fares best, but the best thing in the movie is the silent Buster Keaton-like squirrel, whose indefatigable chase after the acorn he never can quite grab, hatches much of the trouble.

The problem here is global warming. But it's not as big a problem as the film's warmed-over quality. Even Queen Latifah, voicing the new character of a female mammoth who was raised with possums and so thinks she's one, too, has never seemed so lacking in personality. When you start admiring the digital tooling of the textures for want of anything else more involving, you know the problem is more dire than climate change.

ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN: Directed by Carlos Saldanha, written by Jon Vitti, with the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah