Ice Age – The Meltdown is a short, funny, well-animated sequel that offers up a new adventure for the memorable characters from the original Ice Age film. As a great bonus, it’s nicely balanced for audiences young and old.

20th Century Fox Animation is still a poor second cousin to Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios, but for sheer entertainment value, Ice Age – The Meltdown doesn’t get knocked completely out of the water by top-shelf blockbusters like The Incredibles. Sure, the animation is weaker, and story is less inspired, but the voice work is excellent, with the talent of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, Jay Leno, and the list goes on.

What this film has going for it is it’s simply fun to watch. The story this time around has the ice age coming to an end with a big, um, meltdown. The prehistoric animals must get themselves all the way across the large basin they call home to escape an impending, disastrous flood. Our heroes – Manny, the almost-last-mammoth alive, Sid, the lovable-loser sloth, and Diego, the not-so-tough-after-all saber-toothed tiger – find themselves teaming up with an identity-challenged mammoth, Ellie (Queen Latifah), and her possum “brothers” Crash (Sean William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck). Together, they journey toward salvation.

Meanwhile, Skrit, the delightful saber-toothed squirrel, is too busy stalking his acorn to notice the world is about to end. The hilarious sequences with this manic little guy serve as comic transitions for the main story, and they also keep us posted on the progress of the big flood. But mainly, they’re just plain funny.

When this film first hit theatres, critics attacked it for its obvious attempt to push an environmental agenda. Sure, there’s a thinly-veiled message here, but who cares? Kids should be concerned about the environment, so why not exaggerate to make a point?

Overall, we’re talking about an enjoyable prehistoric animated romp, and a sequel that maybe outdoes the original. This is an all-ages friendly film, and that’s a pretty rare thing.

Video

The 1080p 1.85:1 transfer found on this disc is close to perfect – which is a pleasant surprise considering the poor transfer on the SD DVD release. Ice Age: The Meltdown is a bright, colorful movie, which translate beautifully to BD. The colors jump off the screen, specifically the clear blue sky and the brilliant colors on a few of the birds. The detail is spot on, from the animal’s fur, to the glistening on the snow. There is also wonderful image depth and 3D imagery. As expected from a digitally animated film there is no sign of any debris.

So what is holding this disc back you may ask? Well, there are a few instances of very mild edge enhancements (mostly noticeable when the film is paused). More notably, I did notice a few scenes where there were some compression artifacts in the image when there was movement. This was not much of a distraction, but a finely trained eye could notice this a few times throughout the film. Other then these two very nit-picky issues, this is one of the best all-around images I have seen on any HD format.

Audio

As is the case with all Fox BD titles to date, this disc sports a DTS HD 5.1 master lossless audio track. Currently (as of Nov. 19, 2006), the only BD player capable of decoding the DTS HD 5.1 master lossless audio found on this disc is the PS3, and since this disc was reviewed on the Panasonic DMP-BD10, I can only speak to the down converted DTS 5.1 master lossless audio track.

I could not really find any flaws with this audio track. There was great directionality to the sound, good use of the soundstage, and deep and accurate bass. The dialog is presented clearly and perfectly placed. The surround channels were used well for background effects (such as birds chirping), as well as for conveying the active score. Although I could not really pin-point any flaws, this track did not have the same WOW factor that you will find on MI:3 or X-men: The Last Stand. All-in-all, this is a VERY good track that falls just short of being great.

Special Features

This disc comes packed with extras – most of which have been carry-forward from the SD DVD release.

The animated short (presented in 1080p) is called No Time For Nuts, and it features our favorite saber-toothed squirrel, Skrit. It runs about seven minutes, and it’s definitely the best piece of bonus material on the disc. Skrit discovers a time machine, and chases his acorn across the time-space continuum. What fun!

There are two audio commentaries; one with director Carlos Saldanha, and one with everyone else who worked on the movie. Ok, maybe not quite that many folks, but the “crew” commentary sure has a lot of voices, from the producer on down to the lighting supervisor. Surprisingly, this commentary works well even with so many cooks in the kitchen, and there’s a lot to learn about the film’s production. As for Saldanha’s commentary, he talks a heck of a lot, but he’s also pretty repetitive and he points out a lot of the obvious. I guess it would be ok for a youthful audience.

Next is Crash & Eddie Stunts, a three-pack of ultra-short featurettes. These are amusing bits with the two possum brothers, but we’re talking about just 60 seconds of content. Not much of a featurette.

On the other hand, we have The Animation Director’s Chair, which is a featurette with some substance. You can choose from six scenes, and then select which stage of production to review – story board, layout, animation, final, or combo, which lets you see all stages at once. It’s neat to see how close the storyboards were to the final version, especially for the “Fish Story” sequence.

Next up is Lost Historical Films…Student Films on the Ice Age Period, a sub-collection of featurettes on some of the prehistoric/fictional animals featured in the movie. There are six short, black-and-white clips mixing facts and fun, covering guys like The Sloth: “Nature’s Lovable Lisper” and The Saber-toothed Squirrel: “Nature’s Nutty Buddy”. All but one have an old-time narrator, with the exception being John Leguizamo’s lisping narration for the Sloth.

Then there’s Scrat’s Piranha Smackdown Sound Effects Lab, a humorous featurette that offers five different ways to enjoy the 35-second Scrat-Piranha sequence. Each option replaces the film’s sound effects with a different collection of sounds, from Car Noises to Human Noises (read: burps and farts).

Blink and you’ll miss the next ”featurette”, called Outtake Prank. It runs an epic 16 seconds, and shows a “blooper” of the possum catapult stunt. They should have thrown this one in with the Crash & Eddie Stunts.

Then we have Ice Age Arcade, a collection of games. These include a ridiculous trivia game with questions like “how many times is Sid’s name mentioned in the movie?”, a point-and-click soccer shootout, and a personality quiz called Who’s Your Buddy? which lets you find out which main character you’d get along with best. I suppose these are decent enough for games, but I doubt anyone’s going to spend much time on them.

The only BD exclusive extra found on this disc is an Artists Gallery Channel which is a pop-up track consisting of storyboards and conceptual art. This is a good feature, and worth checking out.

The bonus material wraps up with a collection of HD trailers, including a first look at The Simpsons movie (in SD). It’s a bizarre teaser of Homer riding a dog-sled, but it’s pretty amusing. I wonder if it actually has anything to do with the movie.

Final Thoughts

Ice Age: The Meltdown is a fun film for those young and old. This Blu-ray disc is very impressive in all aspects. The audio and video are both excellent, and the extras are fun and involving. Every family with a BD player should own this disc. Strongly recommended.

* Note – the film portion and pieces of the special features portion of this review were written by Tom Buller via UpcomingDiscs.com