Product Description

Your favorite sub-zero heroes are back for another incredible adventure in the super-cool animated comedy Ice Age the Meltdown! The action heats up?and so does the temperature?for Manny, Sid, Diego and Scrat. Trying to escape the valley to avoid a flood of trouble, the comical creatures embark on a hilarious journey across the thawing landscape and meet Ellie, a female woolly mammoth who melts Manny's heart. With its dazzling animation, unforgettable characters and an all-new Scrat short, Ice Age: The Meltdown is laugh-out-loud fun for the whole family!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #847 in DVD
• Brand: TCFHE
• Released on: 2006-11-21
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .30 pounds
• Running time: 91 minutes

Amazon.com
The love life of a woolly mammoth--handled with G-rated delicacy--drives this sequel to the first computer-animated romp in the age of prehistoric mammals. While the first Ice Age took a delightful premise and suffocated it with a formulaic plot--in which a mammoth named Manfred (voiced by Ray Romano, Everyone Loves Raymond), a sloth named Sid (John Leguizamo, Moulin Rouge!), and a sabre-tooth tiger named Diego (Denis Leary, Rescue Me) helped an abandoned human infant return to its tribe (basically, Three Mammals and a Baby)--the sequel takes the now-familiar setting, gives it a shapeless, episodic storyline, and yet somehow becomes pretty darn entertaining. Faced with the threat of a flood from melting ice, our heroic trio are on the run to escape from their blossoming valley. On the way, they meet a female mammoth (Queen Latifah, Bringing Down the House) who thinks she's an opossum and get menaced by some freshly defrosted carnivo! rous fish. Add into the mix a herd of lava-worshipping mini-sloths, some Busby Berkeley-style vultures, and more ingenious slapstick featuring the acorn-crazed Scrat, and Ice Age: The Meltdown will amuse even jaded adults. -- Bret Fetzer

Beyond Ice Age: The Meltdown

Ice Age - Super Cool Edition

Ice Age & Ice Age 2: The Meltdown - (DVD 2-Pack)

Funtastic Adventures Collection Box Set (Ice Age / Robots / Fern Gully / Once Upon a Rainforest)

Stills from Ice Age: The Meltdown (click for larger image)

On the DVD
If your kids have any interest in learning about how animation works, skip the mediocre games and pointless featurettes like Meet Crash & Eddie (which function like commercials for the dvd you've already bought) and dig into the fascinating The Animation Director's Chair and Scrat's Piranha Smackdown. Director's Chair shows a handful of scenes from the movie at different stages of design and polish, while Smackdown repeats the same scene but with wildly different sound effects. There are also two informative commentary tracks--an earnest but dry one from director Carlos Saldanha and a jovial one from several members of the animation crew--but for the general viewer, the gems will be some new scenes featuring the rambunctious opossum brothers and a new short cartoon, No Time for Nuts, in which Scrat scurries through time to find precious acorns. While every bit as gorgeously animated as Ice Age: The Meltdown, this delightful short captures the zippy, elastic flavor of classic Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck cartoons. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
This second "Ice Age" follows the exploits of Manny the mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo), and Diego the sabre-toothed tiger (Denis Leary) as they flee a potential flood (brought on by global warming) for even icier environs. This improved follow-up to the 2002 animated hit boasts a more nuanced look (the animals' facial expressions are quite lively, and the snowy backgrounds are more detailed), and the romping, stomping screenplay has a brisk anything-goes quality. The high point is a musical number consisting of flying vultures circling their prey and breaking into a Busby Berkeley routine to the tune "Food, Glorious Food." Directed by Carlos Saldanha.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

The Squirrel Takes It All
Ice Age: The Big Chill was very good and entertaining. Just seen The Meltdown and was thoroughly entertained. Hollywood finally put something out that didn't have a bunch of sex, blood and gore. Wonderful one liners and originality in this. The QUEEN did an outstanding job, and Ray just made it all the better. This would be one for the DVD Library for sure. Kids AND adults both had a great time. Thank you Hollywood for finally having something that was fun.

Just as funny as the first one
We went to see Ice Age 2 the day it came out, which generally guarantees an enthusiastic and rowdy crowd. Everyone there was laughing and clapping throughout.

Manny (Romano), Diego (Leary), and Syd (Leguizomo) are back. They've turned the heavily iced area into a camp for kids complete with ice slides and wading pools. But a vulture called Fast Tony (cameo by Jay Leno) warns everyone that the ice is melting and soon their valley will be flooded. So once again, everyone must migrate, fleeing to safer and higher ground. On the way, they meet 3 new friends: two opposums named Crash and Eddie (Sean Scott Williams and Josh Peck), and their "sister"- a mammoth named Ellie (Queen Latifah) who doesn't know she's a mammoth. Collectively, they continue on their migration. Syd and Diego try to convince Manny that Ellie can help him keep mammoths from going extinct, and a possible realtionship begins. But flood waters, horrid water creatures, and Ellie's massive identity crisis stumble them a bit along they way. Syd finds respect and reassurance from a secret tribe of sloth's that revere him as the "Fire God". But it's Scrat, everyone's favorite neurotic squirrel, that's the true star of this movie. My kids, and those all around us, laughed their heads off whenever Scrat's crazy acorn antics were on screen. My [...] old asked me today, "Can we go see Ice Age 2 again?". He didn't even say that after seeing "Curious George"! Fun for the whole family.

Pure family amusement
As my 3 year old daughter had worn down the video of the original Ice Age by overuse we decided to try Ice Age: The Meltdown as her introduction to the Movie Theaters.
And were we right. The minute the movie started she stopped fidgeting and kept relatively still. (she did whisper the characters names each time they appeared though).
We were all eager to see this sequel and the rest of the family simply adored it. The only con I might have is 'how can they possibly do a number three now?'
This is certainly on a par with Shrek 2, another sequel which didn't let down it's original.
Family entertainment at its best.