 The critical reaction to Ice Age: The Meltdown is about the same as the reaction to the original movie four years ago: icy. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times sums up: "The movie is nice to look at, the colors and details are elegant, the animals engaging, the action fast-moving, but I don't think older viewers will like it as much as the kids. The first Ice Age movie more or less exhausted these characters and their world, and the meltdown doesn't add much." In the Toronto Globe and Mail, Jennie Punter writes glumly, "Meltdown is essentially a journey from point A to point B, a simple classic plotline on which to hang a collection of set pieces -- some delightful, some wacky, some tediously hackneyed." Michael Booth in the Denver Post, who bestows three stars on the movie, nevertheless remarks that it is really "a fantastic short film stretched by a couple of hours of filler." Several critics applaud the computer-generated animation. "But the story needs to catch up to the magic. Otherwise, what's the point?" asks Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post. |
