The kids will revel in the cuteness of the animals and the clever action sequences, while adults will savor the sly knowingness of the evolutionary and historical in-jokes. One could wish, perhaps, for a bit less sentimentality at the end, but that is a minor quibble in a film that works so well for both children and adults. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary do superb voiceover work, each achieving just the right tone for the character he has been assigned to play. The backgrounds have a colorful, clean, streamlined look to them, and the animals themselves, in their appearance and design, provide a witty commentary on evolutionary history. The animators and designers have done a beautiful job in achieving just the right look for this tale. We chuckle to hear these creatures applying modern, scientific knowledge to the pre-scientific era in which they are living. Like most animated films set in the past, `Ice Age' derives much of its humor through the use of anachronism. One particularly clever scene involves the three travelers discovering what looks like an underground museum of natural history encased in ice, replete with ancient creatures caught in naturally occurring, chain-of-life exhibits. `Ice Age' is at its most amusing in those scenes in which the characters make prescient jokes about their own place in the evolutionary scheme of things. The triumvirate is made up of a deadpan, cynical mammoth, a wisecracking, over-the-top sloth (whose mile-a-minute mouth more than makes up for his legendary slowness) and a malevolent saber-tooth tiger, who learns a thing or two about friendship and teamwork before the adventure is over. Wilson and Peter Ackerman have devised a story set 20,000 years ago about an unlikely trio of companions who find themselves making a long trek through a harsh environment in an effort, ostensibly, to return a baby human to the tribe from which he has become separated. `Ice Age' emerges as one of the better animated films of recent years, cleverly designed and even more cleverly written.
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