The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
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Critics Consensus: Despite its impressive animation and the hilarious antics of the saber-toothed squirrel Scrat, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown comes up short on the storytelling front.
Critic Consensus: Despite its impressive animation and the hilarious antics of the saber-toothed squirrel Scrat, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown comes up short on the storytelling front.
All Critics (144) | Top Critics (34) | Fresh (82) | Rotten (62) | DVD (16)
The storyline wanes towards the end and, from the kids' point of view, the whole package lacks momentum.
In its untouched-by-human-hand way, it's not bad and, as in the first film, the funniest moments involve the half-rat, half-squirrel Scrat.
Watching this zoo of long-vanished quadrupeds, you're left with an eerie message for our own warming times: They fought the thaw, and the thaw won.
[The film] has lots of energy, some decent animation and good voice-over work -- but no real story and few chuckles.
A tad crasser and pushier than its predecessor, Ice Age: The Meltdown is still an entirely serviceable follow-up to the 2002 hit that will thoroughly amuse kids and get a rise or two out of parents as well.
The Meltdown is at least faithful to its predecessor in the sense of being equally as underwhelming.
Ice Age: The Meltdown is a considerable improvement over its predecessor...As before, Scrat (again voiced by Chris Wedge, who this time did not direct) steals the show.
As with the first "Ice Age" movie it is Scrat the acorn-obsessed rodent who bookends the movie and steals the most laughs with his hilarious attempts at obtaining an ever-elusive acorn.
I've seen cooked spaghetti with more tension.
For as endearing as Scrat's antics are, even they can't sustain the lackluster jokes that pass for humor for the bulk of the ninety-minute running time.
I'm not going to beat around the glacier. If you liked Ice Age, you're going to like this sequel.
Abounds in well-paced gags, both visual and verbal.
This film is a major step down compared to how good the first film is and it just gets worse for the ice age series from here. The jokes range from almost tolerable to just okay but the film has a slow pace, not interesting new characters, John Leguizamo has gone from funny to annoying, the mini sloths are obnoxious as all hell, and the love story between Manny and Ellie is not interesting or compelling at all.
Super Reviewer
on par with the first in the series. decent characters and a good concept, average humor and execution. overall, decent family fun.
I like how they use the realtime events in Earth's ancient history as guidelines for the continuing adventures in this franchise. This time the nicely accurate problem of the Ice Age coming to a slow end and massive pending floods risking the lives of everything. We are introduced to a whole bunch of mammal families in this film, all kinds of small to large creatures that now live and play with our original trio. The first impression you get instantly is this time its really aimed at the kids route. There are cute little furry things with big eyes running around with their parents looking after them, more silly childish little visual gags and of course the eventual introduction of female mammoth 'Ellie'. The new mammoth also brings two little sidekick creatures with her that use modern slang with visual references from time to time, clearly to appeal to the whole spectrum of young people. By far the worst characters in the new film and always a mistake to go down that route. The plot is simple again (kids film remember), all the creatures must escape their current home within a large valley because it will flood, not too original this time. Predictably this entails the same kind of japes that we saw in the first film but merely with new mammals to join in. The new mammoth voiced by Queen Latifah also predictably adds a nice cuddly romance into the fold which for myself (and possibly other male adults) kinda made things a bit lame. The two sea reptiles that pursue the team are a nice menacing touch. They don't look too nasty obviously but its cool to see all various types of prehistoric creatures being used, factual or not doesn't matter here. Voices are all the same which is good continuity. This mean we do get more greatness from Leguizamo as 'Sid' who is still easily the best character here. Latifah is a pleasant surprise as 'Ellie' with her quite soothing peaceful voice but all the other characters are more generic, annoying, forgettable and merely filler for the background. Being made a good fours years after the first effects have gotten better also. The whole thing still has that nice minimalistic look to it (mainly backgrounds and ice), I still think it has the old Chuck Jones feel about it at times. Character rendering is much sharper this time, especially on fur, not that is was all that bad in the first film. All the characters look really good accept for 'Diego' whose design is much more static, he was the same in the first film. The really impressive moments are water animations and how they pull off wet fur, this impressed me, 'Sid's' fur looking real enough to reach out and touch. More of a let down for me this one, its still a quality animated film but very much in favour for the youngsters this time. I'm still loving 'Sid' with Leguizamo's top voice and of course you still have 'Scrat' tearing around after his acorn in the excellent running gag/subplot throughout the whole film. Not tired of that lill saber-toothed squirrel yet, that one slither of humour keeps me coming back for more.
I am not a fan of the first "Ice Age" at all really, it just doesn't work for me. However, I do like the sequels. "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown" takes the good from the first movie, builds on it by adding funnier characters and moving the story into a good direction. All the characters are back, Manny(Ray Romano), Sid(John Leguizamo), and Diego(Denis Leary) for a new adventure. Here, the ice begins to melt, and the group has to warn the other animals of the impending flood, and try to get them all to safety. Along the way, they meed a mammoth named Ellie(Queen Latifah) who thinks she is a possum with her 2 possum brothers Crash(Sean William Scoot) and Eddie(Josh Beck). The possums and scrat make this movie so much better than the original. Their humor is hilarious, especially Scrat who never gets old(his short movies outside of the full length features are pretty funny). The animation is better, it's more fluid then the first movie. I'm glad this franchise gets better, because franchises usually get worse. Here, they get better and better.
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