Glacial Discrimination

If the tremendous box-office success that Pixar has had with movies like Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Wall•E, and Up provides heartening proof that a studio that animated films with sophisticated, adult themes and unconventional storytelling techniques can still find an enthusiastic mass audience, the success of Blue Sky Studios’ Ice Age films proves that you can make a whole lot of formulaic computer-animated junk and just as many people will show up to see it.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs — a title that is probably giving biology teachers across the country conniptions even as we speak — is being marketed to kids, but the characters’ preoccupation with aging and family planning, the references to pop culture from the ’70s and ’80s, not to mention the script’s mortifying reliance on dick jokes, suggest that the film’s true audience consists of undemanding married couples in their 40s.

The less-than-urgent plot begins with woolly mammoths Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) preparing for the arrival of their first child; meanwhile, sabre-toothed tiger Diego (Denis Leary) is feeling old and out of shape, chafing at his domesticated state. Meanwhile, Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo), itching to start a family of his own, has adopted three apparently abandoned dinosaur eggs and when the gigantic infant reptiles hatch, he does his best to be their “mommy.” When their real mommy shows up, however, she grabs her children as well as Sid and carries them back home — a lush, tropical jungle that apparently exists in the centre of the earth, unbeknownst to everyone living in the icy world above — forcing Sid’s friends to follow after him and figure out a rescue plan.

Am I alone in thinking that the Ice Age movies are some of the ugliest-looking animated films ever made? There’s none of the rich visual detail and production design that you get in a Pixar film, or even something like Monsters vs. Aliens — just a bunch of hastily drawn backgrounds and inelegant, thick-bodied character designs. (They look like clay sculptures, not animals.) Sid, especially, is a grotesque creation. I realize he’s supposed to be the “wacky” character in the bunch, but with those crossed eyes sticking out from either side of his head, the three or four pieces of hair sprouting crookedly from his skull (each strand as thick as an extension cord), and the gigantic, curved nails at the ends of his paws, he’s the stuff of nightmares. And the voice John Leguizamo has devised for him — a lisping, saliva-spewing riff on Daffy Duck — is equally repellent.

Supposedly the “breakout” character in the series is Scrat, the prehistoric squirrel who races through the background of all three films in pursuit of a maddeningly elusive acorn. The Ice Age producers seem to believe that Scrat is a classic animation character, not unlike Wile E. Coyote, but there was something poignant about Wile E.’s inability to catch the Road Runner; with Scrat, all we get is a lot of strident, bug-eyed slapstick as yet another rock (or tree or ton of snow) falls on his head. In any case, Scrat has to contend with a female rival this time out: a sexy red squirrel named (obnoxiously) “Scratté.” Her presence doesn’t make the gags any funnier — unless playing a Barry White song under their first meeting is your idea of fresh-as-a-daisy hilarity.

Every scene in the film seems to have been created in a spirit of “meh, I guess that’s good enough.” Evolutionary theory says that’s the kind of attitude that renders you extinct, but somehow the Ice Age series has managed to thrive; Dawn of the Dinosaurs made more than $42 million this weekend alone, nearly as much as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Could Darwin be wrong after all?