The whole thing still has that nice minimalistic look to it (mainly backgrounds and ice), I still think it has the old Chuck Jones feel about it at times. Latifah is a pleasant surprise as 'Ellie' with her quite soothing peaceful voice but all the other characters are more generic, annoying, forgettable and merely filler for the background.īeing made a good fours years after the first effects have gotten better also. This mean we do get more greatness from Leguizamo as 'Sid' who is still easily the best character here. Voices are all the same which is good continuity. They don't look too nasty obviously but its cool to see all various types of prehistoric creatures being used, factual or not doesn't matter here. The two sea reptiles that pursue the team are a nice menacing touch. The new mammoth voiced by Queen Latifah also predictably adds a nice cuddly romance into the fold which for myself (and possibly other male adults) kinda made things a bit lame. Predictably this entails the same kind of japes that we saw in the first film but merely with new mammals to join in. The plot is simple again (kids film remember), all the creatures must escape their current home within a large valley because it will flood, not too original this time. By far the worst characters in the new film and always a mistake to go down that route.

The new mammoth also brings two little sidekick creatures with her that use modern slang with visual references from time to time, clearly to appeal to the whole spectrum of young people. There are cute little furry things with big eyes running around with their parents looking after them, more silly childish little visual gags and of course the eventual introduction of female mammoth 'Ellie'. The first impression you get instantly is this time its really aimed at the kids route. We are introduced to a whole bunch of mammal families in this film, all kinds of small to large creatures that now live and play with our original trio.

This time the nicely accurate problem of the Ice Age coming to a slow end and massive pending floods risking the lives of everything. I like how they use the realtime events in Earth's ancient history as guidelines for the continuing adventures in this franchise.

Ice age meltdown