Viewed – 03 January 2011  DVD

I’ll admit it.  I can be a bit of a snob when it comes to some animated movies.  At one stage when considering CGI-based animated fair, if wasn’t by Pixar (Toy Story, Monsters Inc), I would turn my nose up.  Despicable Me proved me wrong however, and so … very late to this one, we have a movie set at the dawn of a very cold winter.

The first thing I noticed was how uninspiring the animation style was, with the characters and scenery all having a plastic-like look to them.  Not the best first impressions, but then the story, that of a Sloth, a Sabre Tooth Tiger and a Mammoth who find a human boy and choose to take him back to his tribe, gradually began to pull me in.  You see, the boy was taken from his tribe by his mother fleeing a Sabre Tooth Tiger attack, and when the Mammoth and co find him, the Sabre Tooth secretly plots to lead them into a trap.  The Sloth was the comedy fodder here, and the different perils the group faced during their journey were certainly entertaining.  Yet the movie’s gentle tone felt a touch too ‘safe’ for me, and it wasn’t exactly laugh-out-loud funny (unless you’re three).  The plot also was nothing particularly different, but I did like how things came together at the end, with some nice twists.

As part of an ongoing franchise, I liked the characters and setting enough to want to check out the sequels … so that can’t be bad.

Verdict:  2.5 /5