ICE AGE (Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha, 2002)

Reviewed: May 6, 2002

Paul Revere rose from the dead, took to his horse and galloped across my brain for the duration of Ice Age, screaming a single sentence all the while: "I wish this movie were silent!" he cried, again and again. "I couldn't agree more!" my brain responded without fail.

Oh, how I longed for this movie to be silent! Not completely silent of course, but silent, 1920s cinema, silent. Music, even sound FX. But please sweet God or whatever-the-fuck you are, no dialogue. The images of Ice Age are too striking and imaginative to be offset by dialogue. The dialogue never begins to do the images any justice, the dialogue is plain and sometimes weak and completely superfluous and it just lays their, flat, lifeless, dead, rotten, decaying. As good animated films always do, Ice Age immediately transfers you to another world. CGI animation particularly seems to inspire in filmmakers the ultimate freedom, the ability and thus the willingness to take the viewer to the farthest reaches of Earth or beyond. In Ice Age we are taken to... an Ice Age. There are very few animals, almost no humans. Just land. And sea. And mountains. And ice. And cliffs. And volcanoes. And sunsets. Ahhhhhhh before humanity crassly destroyed all that was authentic and simple. I don't know. Something about this lost era, when Earth was how God or whatever-the-fuck first created it, always gets me. The future was bright and empty. Endless potential. Think what could have been changed.

Ice Age is a charming movie with some terrific sequences (the dodo sequences, the Woolly Mammoth etchings on cave wall comes to life sequence [which easily could have been maudlin but wasn't], the ski escape). But it's greatest sequences--clearly the two biggest achievements of the film--are the opening and closing ones. Both feature a squirrel and are... silent! These sequences bookend the film, wisely beginning and ending it on a high note.

But aside from them, Ice Age never extends itself. There's very little conflict. Without giving away the ending, let me say the film's primary villain is a big disappointment. For most of the film he fools around and travels with Ice Age's two heroes, working his angle, never too menacing. He has a few accomplices, but they're off in the background of the film, with only a few scenes, never doing much of anything, never scary even by kids' standards. I saw this problem in Harry Potter and I saw it in Spider-Man, and now I saw it in Ice Age-- filmmakers just don't seem to comprehend that fairy-talish battles of good versus evil require super strong villains! It's a necessity, no way around it. Take Aladdin, take The Little Mermaid, take 101 Dalmatians, take Toy Story, take Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. All have villains you genuinely wouldn't wanna meet on the street.

Ice Age plot follows a sabertooth tiger (villain), a sloth (hero), and a woolly mammoth (hero) who find a lost human infant and then embark on a journey to return him to his tribe. The heroes are mischievous and cute and amicable and gruff when need be, but they are never truly heroic or even that interesting. See, Ice Age mostly ambles along, amusing, never trying to be anything more. This is not a Shrek, although it could have been above Shrek with a just few minor changes: First... destroy the dialogue. Second... use that newfound freedom! Jump and swim around in it... increase the locations... play up the fact that the ice age could lead to species' extinction and note that that should be the greatest source of dramatic conflict, not returning a baby we don't care about to its owner we care even less about. Create some new clever and exciting long-ass action sequences... they can be as long as you want since your concentration is focused solely on the images now.

My favorite shot in Ice Age happens when the main characters are discussing an impending snow storm. It's edited simply... but towards the end of the scene, during one of the character's medium reaction shots, a few flurries fall. Literally just a few, maybe ten at most. It's hardly even perceptible. If the Ice Age filmmakers were always working at that level of visual subtlety and command and never had to be concerned with dialogue and performance, you've got an animated film that very well might be able to hold its place amongst the best of all time.

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