Likewise, the film's humor relies on slapstick and sight gags to send its younger crowd into fits of laughter while using subtle innuendo to keep adults chuckling too. It's surprisingly meaty material for a kids' film, but Wedge and Saldanha handle the dual-audience challenge with seeming ease. Manfred has to work through his own bitterness, Sid has to battle low self-esteem, and Diego has to decide if his loyalties lie in his own sense of decency or in blind adherence to his own kind. The plot may be simplistic, but it works. Thankfully, co-directors Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha use every second of the film to develop their characters and explore a bevy of complex emotions. 'Ice Age' blazes by in an instant - at a mere 81-minutes, the story doesn't have a lot of time to waste piddling about from glacier to glacier. The three animals (four if you count Scrat, a sabre-toothed squirrel that pops up throughout the adventure) have to work together to overcome the harsh elements of the Ice Age, protect the child from a pack of vengeful saber-tooth tigers, and deal with their own insecurities and prejudices.
Led by a grumpy woolly mammoth named Manfred (voiced by Ray Romano), this unlikely band of brothers includes a slow-witted sloth named Sid (John Leguizamo) and a manipulative saber-tooth tiger named Diego (Denis Leary). 'Ice Age' tells the tale of a ragtag bunch of prehistoric critters that decide to return a lost human child to his family. With one sequel successfully tucked under their belt and a trilogy capper set for theatrical release in 2009, Blue Sky has managed to capture the imagination of kids and adults everywhere, and they didn't even need the Pixar logo to do it. Between the avalanche of Oscars, critical praise, and fan adoration, Pixar has set the bar so incredibly high that most rival studios simply work to stay afloat, but don't tell that to Blue Sky Studios, the CG animation house responsible for the 'Ice Age' franchise.
It must be tough to live in the shadow of Pixar Animation Studios - the monolithic mainstay of the modern animation industry.
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