Ice Age

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: March 15, 2002

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

61	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Desson Thomson

This digitally animated movie, filled with a cast of charming, funny critters from long ago, is family entertainment at its most bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Ice Age never matches the brilliance of ''Toy Story'' or the heartfelt heft of ''Shrek,'' but it's an antic and sweet-spirited pleasure. Read full review

David Ansen

A clever, pleasingly sentimental tale of prehistoric times.

TV Guide MagazineFrank Lovece

No matter your age, this is one great AGE to be at. Read full review

Ann Hornaday

Full of visual dazzle, engaging characters and a reasonably sprightly narrative. Read full review

Peter Rainer

Marvelously funny. Read full review

Jane Crowther

Though the narrative style of Ice Age has been around for almost as long, superb animation, a droll script, and excellent vocal talents make this a compelling and surprisingly moving addition to the computer-generated canon (where it sits alongside the likes of "Monsters, Inc." and "Shrek"). Read full review

EmpireIan Freer

It may lack the fine-tuned inventiveness of Toy Story or the knowingness of Shrek, but it still delivers solid laughs and thrills wrapped up in an infectious sense of character. Read full review

Jay Carr

The coolest animation in town. Read full review

Mike Clark

A minor delight but a delight just the same. Read full review

Roger Ebert

A pleasure to look at and scarcely less fun as a story. I came to scoff and stayed to smile. Read full review

Michael Wilmington

It's a fast, funny picture, and the worst thing you can say about it is that it's no "Toy Story," no "Shrek." That may be true, but one thing Ice Age proves is that the new digitized cartoons are a form whose time has come. Read full review

James Berardinelli

They center on the devilishly clever, exceedingly enjoyable interludes featuring the aforementioned rodent in situations and circumstances that recall the great animated work of the recently departed Chuck Jones. Read full review

Jack Mathews

Its story, characters, dialogue, humor and voice performances are first-rate.

Mick LaSalle

Comes closer than any other recent animated film to the Looney Tunes ideal. Just as Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny entertained without either condescending to kids or lobbing adult jokes over their heads. Read full review

Josh Larsen

The movie’s best moments – especially those involving the futile acorn hunt of a squirrel/rat – are those in which [Wedge’s] wicked wit shines through. Read full review

Joe Leydon

An entertaining story that, while not terribly original, is sufficiently arresting and often laugh-out-loud funny. Read full review

Michael Dequina

To complain about the lack of originality is to ignore the real wit and joy behind this very fun film. Read full review

Sean Axmaker

Cute and often clever, there's nothing particularly memorable in this computer enhanced rerun, but this harmless little comedy has an unexpected warmth that melts the frozen plot. Read full review

Jonathan Foreman

Almost everything about Ice Age proves to be disappointingly generic. Read full review

Carrie Rickey

Diverting, if undistinguished. Read full review

Liam Lacey

There are too many moments in Ice Age when you find yourself thinking: less bonding and fewer anti-Darwinian life-lessons please; more of that anarchist Scrat. Read full review

Michael Sragow

Ice Age snaps with visual wit whenever director Wedge breaks the stale story to pieces and pumps in some bracing fresh air. So it's fitting to find, when the final credits roll, that he played Scrat.

Lawrence Toppman

How odd that some of the most appealing elements of this new animation should be action sequences as old as cinema itself. Read full review

Hank Sartin

The animation is remarkable, except for the stiff, marionettelike humans. Read full review

Joe Morgenstern

If Ice Age lacks the fit and finish of top-of-the-line films from Pixar, DreamWorks or Disney, it's still an impressive piece of work for a new feature animation group, and a harbinger of cool cartoons to come.

Keith Phipps

Kids won't mind a bit, but adults accustomed to "Shrek" and Pixar will have no trouble spotting what's missing. Read full review

Kimberley Jones

Has a heart bursting with good intentions, something that goes a long way in dimming from memory its inherent routineness. Read full review

Michael Atkinson

Has only its stylized designs to recommend it. Read full review

Richard Corliss

It yearns for Pixar-style wit without quite earning it. Read full review

Kenneth Turan

The problem rather is the wholesale embracing of what has become de rigueur in animation, the practice of treating major characters as if they were stand-up comics working a room in Las Vegas. Read full review

A.O. Scott

The blandly likable computer-animation extravaganza Ice Age actually seems like a fossil, a relic from another era. Read full review

Manohla Dargis

It's a shame no one gave the three voice stars of this appealing animation -- Ray Romano, John Legui zamo and Denis Leary -- a shot at the script. Read full review

New Times (L.A.)Robert Wilonsky

Renders it a cross between "Three Men and a Baby" and "Monsters, Inc." But it's bereft of the charisma of the former and the energy of the latter; stuck in a frozen wasteland, it possesses all the vigor of a Popsicle.