Ice Age

Three prehistoric animals—a mammoth (voice by Ray Romano), a sloth (John Leguizamo) and a saber-toothed cat (Denis Leary)—carry an abandoned baby to its human tribe as glaciers creep south; but the cat is double-crossing the other two, leading them to his gang to be slaughtered. Director Chris Wedge and writers Michael Berg and Peter Ackerman had only six creative credits among them before this computer-animated feature, and their lack of experience is painfully clear. The animation is sleek and smooth and there are some amusing gags (most involving a squirrel and an acorn), but the characters are visually unappealing (the pictures don’t live up to the voices) and the story is excruciatingly predictable; without the novelty of animation it would be just a routine mismatched-buddies picture.