The characters in Ice Age turned out to be endearing and popular.  Here they are, four years on.  What has advanced during the four years is both the technical know-how that can bring greater detail to the computergraphics of the characters and their interactions as well as more vivid action sequences as well as the onset of global warming.  As in the 21st century, the world is moving towards meltdown.

So, Ice Age is now serving as an entertaining and alerting fable about the consequences of the warming of the world.

Manny, the lone Mammoth (voiced by Everybody Loves Raymond’s Ray Romano), Sid, the would-be famous Sloth (voiced by John Leguizamo) and Diego, the tooth-capped and ironic sabre tiger (voiced by Denis Leary) decide that they had better join all the animals in their trek to find a boat that will save them from the dam-burst that will flood their valley.  So, it’s a journey movie and a quest, an inner journey and quest – one can safely say this because Sloth, for one, is into pop psychological observations, especially about Diego’s fear of water because he can’t swim.  But, Diego gets the opportunity to be heroic about this.  Sloth gets to be heroic, because in his dreams and in reality, he is mistaken for a mythical hero (and does not mind in the least).

And what does Manny find?  Ellie, a beautiful mammoth (voiced by Queen Latifah) who thinks that all mammoths are extinct and that she is, in fact, a possum, like her two mischievous brothers.  Will they find true love?  Will the mammoths avoid extinction – well, in the short term anyway?

The dialogue is witty.  The circling vultures break out into Food, Glorious Food.  And there is a great deal of physical comedy.  Oh, and what about Scrat, who started it all rumbling last time when he tried to retrieve his acorn?  He is now a star of the show.  His opening attempts to get the acorn are hilarious and this continues right to the end (including a detour into acorn heaven to the strains of Katchaturian’s Spartacus!).

Even better than the original.

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