Ice Age 2: The Meltdown

Much like the original film, this is a light travelogue featuring some fun jokes and friendly characterisation.

The irony for me was that I found I was far more intrigued by the film's serious content. There is no real villain in this – the enemy is the characters' environment.

I'm also interested in the franchise's scant care for pop culture history. The "ice age" has now finished, and the characters from the first film, have simply outlived it! We could try to rationalise this and suppose that the "ice age" of the title is in fact just an ordinary winter, but I think the aim here was to adapt the historical theory using the same casual method that old TV shows are made-over for the big screen with. The title is retained, along with a few of the original ingredients purely for inspiration, but that's about it.

From that perspective, I'm quite looking forward to Ice Age 3.