by MARK SLUTSKY

Like any other company producing CGI animated films these days, Blue Sky Studios is fated to remain in the shadow of Pixar. But it would be unfair to dismiss Blue Sky altogether just because they don’t live up to the industry leader; as a matter of fact, they’ve produced some decent stuff in the past. The first Ice Age movie was a surprisingly entertaining, lightly stylized and altogether genial family film. On the other hand, their next offering, Robots, was a big mechanical turd. So where does their latest, the sequel Ice Age: The Meltdown sit?

Well, while lacking some of the original Ice Age’s charm, part deux is definitely... decent. In other words, it’s no Robots. And if you want to really get into the bad cartoon stakes, it’s certainly no... shudder... Doogal.

The movie starts with our posse from the last picture, woolly mammoth Manny (voiced by Ray Romano), sabre-toothed tiger Diego (Denis Leary) and neurotic sloth Sid (John Leguizamo) hanging out on their glacier home. Soon word comes that the world is warming up—the glacier is melting and everybody’s gotta get out of the way before the peaceful glacier valley is flooded. Plus there’s the matter of some recently thawed carnivorous sea creatures with a taste for mammal. So our crew sets out for the end of the valley and salvation, and hopefully a breeding partner for Manny, who believes himself to be the last living mammoth—at least until he meets Ellie (Queen Latifah), who believes herself to be a possum. Long story.

There’s not much that’s surprising—pop culture jokes, goofy sidekick-isms—in the movie’s main narrative stream. But the best parts of Ice Age: The Meltdown involve the little, wordless squirrel buddy from the first movie and the movie’s trailers. You know, the little buddy who’s always trying to get himself an acorn, with hilarious results. His antics get a lot of screen time in this movie and with his vaguely Looney Tunes-ish pratfalls, he is definitely the most entertaining thing about this passable but hardly exciting sequel.

Ice Age: The Meltdown opens Friday, March 31

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