Ice Age: The Meltdown and Over The Hedge

Ice Age: The Meltdown

The start of the animation movie season kicked off with the wonderful sequel to Ice Age. The new movie, Ice Age: The Meltdown, brought to us from the fine folks at Blue Sky Studios and released through 20th Century Fox, was a delight and surprise (a little).

The story picks where the last movie left off, but now the gang has to face the meltdown from the ice. Also Manny starts to think he may be the last wholly mammoth. The plot itself was not very deep and perhaps not as fun as the first movie. Visually the animation and graphics were taken up a quite a bit. Since most of the cast from the first movie were upgraded for this outing, Blue Sky did not simply rely on the original models or rendering styles. The fact that this movie was done in 8 months is incredible, even with pre-existing models that were tweaked. I enjoyed the movie as much as the first Ice Age. I did not laugh out load as much as before but still really liked it. Blue Sky continues to create wonderful movies with great visual style and fun humor for the whole family. Well done!


Over The Hedge

Over The Hedge came out against some heavy competition, The Da Vinci Code. Though neither film really hits the same audience, I think it did have an affect at the box office on opening weekend. Over The Hedge comes from DreamWorks Animation, makers of Shrek and Madagascar. After DreamWorks last couple animated films, I was a little leery of Over The Hedge. The over-the-top marketing and continued use of big name actors for the voice acting had me wanting to see something else. For those who might lump Wallace & Gromit with 'latest' release of DreamWorks, my reference was to actual DreamWorks Animation productions (Shark Tale & Madagascar specifically) were as the wonderful W&G (and Chicken Run for that matter) was produced by Aardman Animation and distributed by DreamWorks. They like to use the marketing gag of claiming "from the creators of Shrek and ect..." when in reality Aardman is located in the UK and 'creates' their work completely separate from DreamWorks. They have even started the propaganda train for Flushed Away with the tagline of 'from the creators of Shrek and Madagascar" when it those creators have NOTHING to do with the film. Why aren't they touting 'from the creators of Oscar® winning Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit’. With the poor showing that Madagascar had (compared to the expectations) I don't know that I would wave it as a flagship title. Aardman continues to make amazing films and does so without the 'creators' at DreamWorks having anything to do with them. But I digress...

Back to Over The Hedge.
I have to say I was surprised. It was much better than I expected. The animation was done well, the style for the animals was great, though the human characters seem to lack in the design department. Some of the voice acting was a little stiff and goes to further prove that big name stars do not mean great voice actors. Look how Pixar always creates characters first and then finds the voice that fits the character. Some would argue that Tom Hanks and Tim Allen would qualify as big name actors, but both of these guys were not quite big names when the original Toy Story was in production.

The story for Over The Hedge was simple and to the point. A family lesson was thrown in for good measure. It seams like each of DreamWorks animated films they have to have the 'character that steals the show'. OTH was no exception. Hammy the squirrel was funny and did add some of the films best moments. Hammy appears to be loosely based on Scrat from Ice Age. He was not quite as cute or clever, but still was still a good character. Overall Over The Hedge was a solid film, better that Madagascar, light years ahead of Shark Tale and possibly a sign that DreamWorks can make good animated films beyond the Shrek franchise.