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Audiences warm up to Ice Age

© M. Fernandez Locklin

Some marketing guru is trying to tap into a new moneymaker. Dinosaurs and cute puppies weren’t enough; now they have to throw mammoths and saber-toothed tigers at us! So, I had to check out this new movie “Ice Age”. (Especially since audiences the second weekend of this film's release seemed to prefer it to the re-release of E.T.)

20th Century Fox’s “Ice Age” starts with a squirrel-like creature we know from the trailers as Scrat as he tries to bury a prized acorn in the frozen tundra that is the beginning of an Ice Age on Earth. His efforts create a crack in the ice that continues for miles until it meets a glacier that cracks and causes an awesome avalanche.

Cut to a seemingly unrelated event. We meet Sid the Sloth, voiced by John Leguizamo, who has been left behind in the migration to warmer climates. It wasn’t a mistake; Sid is an annoying creature. He meets, and forces a friendship with, Manfred the Mammoth, voiced by Ray Romano. Thank goodness for Manfred (named Manny by Sid): I don’t think a parent could sit through a feature-length film with the sloth version of Jar-Jar as the main character!

Soon we meet Diego, the Saber-toothed tiger who has been ordered by his tribe to rescue a human infant and return it to the tiger tribe so that its leader can have his final revenge on the baby’s father. This is a pretty horrifying thought; fortunately, it never happens. Sid, then Manfred, takes on the responsibility of returning the child to his human tribe. Unfortunately, the humans have moved on for the winter and our small mismatched herd must find them before they leave the frozen tundra. So Diego, voiced by Denis Leary, offers to help them track the humans – no charge.

This one plot point is the reason the story passed my initial test. I was certain the screenwriters had decided not to deal with the fact that Diego wants to kill the child, not save it. But in a scene soon after, Diego visits his tribe and informs them that not only is he bringing the child, he is also bringing them a sumptuous dinner of mammoth with a side of sloth.

At first, out heroes are reluctant compadres in the quest for this child’s father. By the end of the film, however, after battling others and proving their own allegiance to this new herd, they become friends. In the process, we learn diligence from Sid, who, despite what we believe otherwise, is the main reason this child survives and is taken home. We learn honor from Manfred, who, despite losing his family at the hands of the humans, is nonetheless forgiving because this child had nothing to do with the men who killed Manny’s family. From Diego, we learn change; he realizes what true friendship is about and turns on his former herd when he realizes they weren’t his friends – Manfred and Sid are.