Bilgi :If any one movie proved that Disney no longer owned the animation market, it was Ice Age. Four years ago, Pixar had produced a few Disney-sponsored hits, and DreamWorks had cleverly positioned itself as the anti-Disney with movies like Shrek, but the animated world still basically revolved around the Mouse House in one way or another until Ice Age came along. Produced by Blue Sky
and distributed by 20th Century Fox, this prehistoric
computer-animated cartoon didn't exactly revolutionize the art
of storytelling, but it did exist on its own terms, and what's
more, audiences flocked to it�and in greater numbers than they
have gone to almost any of Disney's homegrown efforts for the
past decade.
Manny the woolly mammoth (Ray
Romano) gets some troubling news from Fast Tony (Jay
Leno)
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With success like that, a sequel was
inevitable, and here it is. Ice Age: The Meltdown
offers up more of what made the first film a hit: the woolly
mammoth Manfred (voice of Ray Romano) is still coping with the
loss of his family, and possibly his entire species; he and
his friends, Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the
sabretooth tiger (Denis Leary), escape several perilous
situations as they embark on a migration together; and the
story is punctuated every now and then by hilarious scenes
featuring Scrat, the mute squirrel-rat who steals the show
with his oft-thwarted struggles to find, keep, and hide his
nuts.
Some things are different, though. You may
recall that the first film ended with Sid saying, as he and
his new friends walked into the sunset, "You know, this whole
Ice Age thing's getting old. You know what I could go for?
Global warming." In the second film, Sid gets his wish; a
giant, mountain-sized block of ice is melting, and when the
wall of ice bursts�for some reason it has stayed frozen, and
acts like a dam, even though everything behind it has turned
to water�the valley in which the animals live will be flooded.
And so the animals who live in that valley embark on an
emergency migration to a "boat" that might save them. (It
sounds, and looks a bit, like Noah's Ark, but it's actually a
tree trunk.)
Diego the saber-toothed tiger
(Denis Leary) isn't too thrilled with Sid the Sloth
(John Leguizamo)
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There are no Neanderthals or human beings
this time, and without them and their complicated relationship
to the animals, the second film lacks the themes of revenge
and forgiveness that made the first film so unexpectedly
moving. Indeed, there are no villains of any sort here, not
even among the animals�unless you count a couple of sea
monsters who emerge from the thawed ice, or the vultures who
never directly hurt anybody, but who gloat over how they can't
wait to feast on the other animals once they've drowned.
Plus, because there is no longer any serious
friction between the three main characters�Manfred no longer
minds the company, and Diego no longer threatens to eat anyone
(which raises the question, exactly what does this
natural carnivore live on, now?)�the new film has to find
other ways to make them funny and to give them some sort of
character growth. The results are rather lame in Diego's case;
we learn that this supposedly tough tiger has an embarrassing
phobia, so of course, a situation arises later on which
requires him to conquer his fear, and that's that. Things
aren't much better where Sid is concerned, though his story at
least takes some amusing turns, when he encounters a tribe of
sloths who give him the respect that he wants, just not
perhaps in the way that he would want it.
Ellie (Queen Latifah) gives
possums Crash and Eddie (Seann William Scott Josh Peck)
a ride
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Then there is lonely Manfred, who bumps into
a woolly she-mammoth named Ellie (Queen Latifah) and begins to
entertain thoughts of repopulating the species. There are a
few problems with this, though. First, because Ellie was
raised by possums and she still travels with her possum
"brothers" Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck),
she thinks that she herself is a possum�a scenario that is
more absurd than funny, though I did like the scene where she
urgently rolls over on her back and "plays dead" at the sight
of a predatory bird. Second, the two mammoths have no
chemistry, and the fitful stabs at a relationship between them
feel completely obligatory, whether because it is demanded by
the continuation of the species or because it is demanded by
the rules of screenwriting.
In some ways, the film is reminiscent of
Robots, the last Blue Sky production; both that film
and Ice Age: The Meltdown revel in clever, complex
set-pieces and lowbrow, big-rear-end humor, but fall somewhat
short when it comes to character development and interpersonal
warmth. Still, if the new film doesn't quite resonate on the
same emotional or even spiritual levels that the first film
did, it does have a zany energy that sometimes transcends the
humor of the first film. Even the pop-culture references go
beyond the mere fact that they refer to other movies; you
don't have to be familiar with the musical Oliver! to
get a kick out of the scene where the vultures, giddy with
anticipation, burst into a rapturous chorus of "Food Glorious
Food." And of course, just when things start to sag, there is
always Scrat, whose misadventures with the acorn actually
become a significant plot point, for once. Ice Age: The
Meltdown isn't exactly up there with Pixar, in terms of
quality, but it'll do. |
