Ice Age: The Meltdown arrived in 2006 as the second entry in the Ice Age series, and it does exactly what a sequel is built to do: bring back the parts that worked and add a few new ones. Manny, Sid and Diego return. So does Scrat, still chasing that acorn. What’s new is a flood, a love interest, and two frozen reptiles with an appetite.
The film was directed by Carlos Saldanha and written by Peter Gaulke, Gerry Swallow and Jim Hecht. It runs 91 minutes. 20th Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios produced it. It premiered March 19, 2006, at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, then opened in the United States on March 31.
Trailer, via FilmTrailersChannel.
A Dam, a Boat, and Three Days
The setup is clean and it moves fast. Manny, Sid and Diego live in a valley ringed by a high ice wall. That wall, they learn, is a dam barely holding back a reservoir that would flood everything below. A vulture called the Lone Gunslinger tells them there’s a boat at the far end of the valley. They have three days to reach it. Then a chunk of ice breaks off the top of the dam, and the evacuation starts immediately.
That’s a good engine for a family film. A deadline, a destination, a valley full of animals who need warning. The Meltdown doesn’t waste much time getting the herd moving.
Manny has a second problem. He thinks he may be the last mammoth alive. That thread is what gives the movie its emotional weight, and it’s the thread the film cares about most.
Ellie, Crash, and Eddie
On the road, the trio meets Ellie, a mammoth voiced by Queen Latifah. She was raised by a family of opossums and believes she’s one. Her adoptive brothers, Crash and Eddie, voiced by Seann William Scott and Josh Peck, come along. Sid invites them. They accept.
Ellie’s arc lands when she remembers being an orphaned calf adopted by Crash and Eddie’s mother. That’s when she understands she’s a mammoth. It’s a simple beat, and it works because the movie doesn’t overplay it.
Manny falls for her. He denies it at first, because he feels like he’s replacing his dead wife and child. Ellie pulls away when he suggests “saving their species,” which she takes as an insult. They reconcile later. That’s the spine of the film, and it’s sturdier than the flood.
Cretaceous and Maelstrom
The villains are Cretaceous, a purple Metriorhynchus, and Maelstrom, a dark green Globidens. Both have been frozen since the Mesozoic era. Melting ice frees them, and they want to eat every mammal they can during the flood. The herd runs into them crossing a pond, and it’s a risky encounter.
These two are the weakest part of the movie. They’re a threat without much personality, and the film never gives them the kind of comic timing that Scrat gets for free. They exist to add danger to a journey that already has a deadline. That’s enough, but only just.
Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary all reprise their roles as Manny, Sid and Diego. Chris Wedge returns as Scrat. Jay Leno voices Fast Tony. Will Arnett voices the Lone Gunslinger Vulture.
Here’s how the production stacks up:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| March 19, 2006 | Premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Hollywood |
| March 31, 2006 | U.S. theatrical release |
| 2009 | Sequel, Dawn of the Dinosaurs, released |
What the Meltdown Gets Right
The film grossed $667 million and finished as the third highest-grossing movie of 2006. That number tells you the audience showed up. It doesn’t tell you the movie earned it.
The honest read is that The Meltdown is a step down from the original and a clear step up from what the series would become. The flood is a better premise than it is a third act. The geyser field near the boat splits the herd, and the two mammoths argue about which route is safest. That’s a fine complication, but the movie has already spent its best ideas on the dam and the boat.
What holds it together is Manny. A kids’ movie about a mammoth afraid he’s the last of his kind, and then afraid to love again, is doing more than it has to. The Meltdown treats that seriously without getting maudlin about it. Queen Latifah’s Ellie is a good match for Romano’s Manny, and the opossum brothers give the film its silliest energy.
The tagline — “Kiss your nuts goodbye” — tells you what the marketing thought it was selling. The movie is gentler than that, and better for it.
The mixed reviews the film received were fair. It’s a sequel that plays it safe, adds characters instead of ideas, and leans on Scrat for the laughs it can’t write. But it also has a real emotional throughline and a clean, understandable plot. For a 91-minute family film, that’s not nothing.
Ice Age: The Meltdown is worth watching for Manny’s story. The flood is the setup. The mammoth is the point. 6.7 of 10.
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