The Film
The story of three unlikely friends brought together to save the life of a human baby and bring him back to his tribe, Ice Age has a rather straightforward plot that will be fairly easy for any young child to swallow. Although it does spin a tale of camaraderie, bravery, and overcoming prejudices that can be applied to the real world, it never lapses into the realm of moralizing.
The overall look is what most likely offered the biggest challenge for the filmmakers at Blue Sky Studios. This is the ice age, after all; a landscape that would appear to offer little in the way of art direction. Amazingly, the animation never really becomes "boring" to look at, so I'd say they did a good job.
The character casting is mostly solid, with the exception of Ray Romano who never comes across as believable as Manfred the mammoth, in my opinion. Denis Leary and John Leguizamo, on the other hand, offer outstanding voice performances in their respective roles. Leguizamo, in particular, offers much needed comic relief as the clumsy ground sloth Sid, as the film tends to lag quite often in the area of laughs. Leary, in turn, is certainly believable as the conniving saber-toothed cat who can't quite be trusted.
Ice Age may never reach the quality level of a production from the likes of Pixar, but it certainly does offer an enjoyable distraction for the whole family. One could definitely do worse than to sit down and watch this wonderfully animated film.
The Picture
Presented in a 1080p/24 high definition AVC transfer at 16 Mbps in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the picture on the Ice Age Blu-ray Disc looks very good, but not perfect. There are times where color banding is apparent and the picture softens. I would have to speculate that these issues are due to the film being compressed at such a low bitrate to fit onto a single layer, 25GB disc. This is a CG animated film and digitally sourced; it should look pristine, just like the Pixar releases, but it doesn't. Although there are some issues with the transfer, they are relatively minor and rarely detract from the viewing enjoyment of the film.
The color palette, though muted and consisting mainly of whites, greys, and pale blues, is well presented and balanced. Black level and contrast are never an issue. The detail brought out by the high definition transfer does at times expose the artificial nature of the CG animation in some areas, but this is something that is also easily excused.
The Sound
For this release FOX offer English DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks. Still not being able to decode DTS-HD MA, I listened to the "core" DTS track (1.5Mbps) that is embedded in the DTS-HD MA soundtrack.
The mix is engulfing, offering a fully discrete, 360-degree soundstage with many sound effects sweeping around the rear channels. Overall, it is well balanced and easy on the ears with an ample amount of low frequencies for a good full sound. Dialogue is clear and well placed in the channels and there is a good amount of ambience used that gives the mix a cohesive sound.
The Extras
There are a decent, but not overwhelming amount of extras provided on this release. The number one extra provided is quaint animated short Gone Nutty: Scrat's Missing Adventure (1.78:1/high definition) in which Scrat tries to gather his acorns and has unexpected consequences on the Earth's geography.
Other than that, there are four deleted scenes (1.78:1/high definition) that don't offer much to the film, the Ice Age theatrical trailer, two other Ice Age promos, three trailers for Fox Blu-ray releases and an audio commentary with director Chris Wedge and co-director Carlos Saldanha.
Final Thoughts
As mentioned before, Ice Age never reaches the quality of storytelling or voice acting that a production from Pixar might attain, nor does the quality of the animation explode from the screen in the same manner. However, the story does teach a good lesson to children and adults, and will be a pleasant viewing experience for some time to come. Although the Blu-ray release falls short of being absolute demo quality material, it is still the definitive version of this title, looking and sounding quite nicely overall.
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