Ice Age
Blue Sky isn't about to knock Pixar Animation off its perch, but with ''Ice Age'' it firmly establishes a place in the world of post-Pixar animation. That world is a sleek, slick, freshly tooled one in which imaginative renderings of light and landscape dominate. The film's characters, while conceived along more traditional lines, are engaging, too, and will carry ''Ice Age'' into the family-friendly demographic that now routinely demands computer-generated sheen in its animated entertainment, but still wants sentiment.
The story, which takes place 20,000 years ago, gives audiences something new to look at. No dinosaurs (they were long extinct). Instead, a woolly mammoth, a sloth, and a saber-toothed tiger form an unlikely rescue team when they attempt to return a human infant to its tribe.
What they've got in common is that all are moving south - ahead, they hope, of the advancing ice. Because real ice moves slowly, the filmmakers hit upon the device of having a prehistoric squirrel/rat start the ice moving by trying to bury an acorn in a glacier, with disastrous results for all concerned. The gurgly infant is mostly just baggage, which gives the mammoth plenty to grumble about.
Ray Romano is a good grumbler, and John Leguizamo's street-flavored motormouthing activates the sloth as the rescuers survive encounters with, among others, rhinos and dodos. They're a little more trusting than they ought to be of the saber- toothed tiger who joins them and who clearly sees the infant as a menu item, not a mission.
A less skilled actor than Denis Leary might have had more difficulty escaping the shadow of the tiger Jeremy Irons voiced in ''The Lion King.'' But Leary is up to the challenge, and his toothy tiger, Diego, adds heft to the film's dramatic arc. What Manny the Mammoth and Sid the Sloth add is a borscht-belt flavor, or maybe Carnegie Deli. Their shtick sometimes seems 20,000 years old, although it's good-natured and lively. Still, the fact that we're watching a very old story in some extremely fresh-looking skin (the film's renderings of animal hair mark another computerized advance) will prove more reassuring than distracting to the film's target audience.
The chief impact and appeal of ''Ice Age'' lies in its visuals, resplendent in a way that seems less artificial than the warmed-over sentimentality of the story. We're still in the first chapter of the book that computer technology is rewriting, and every new feature, it seems, advances the frontiers. Here, the play of light on ice, on land, and on the animals is more subtle and sophisticated than ever before. To these eyes, the film reaches a breathtaking peak when the characters hurtle through a network of captivatingly translucent ice tunnels.
It has taken 20th Century Fox a while to land on the animation scoreboard. Now it has. ''Ice Age'' is the coolest animation in town.
Jay Carr can be reached by e-mail at jcarr@globe.com.
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