I'm really surprised that Ice Age doesn't have the slogan "If you liked Shrek, you'll love Ice Age!" plastered on it. In this case, it would be an extremely useful piece of marketing... in my case, since I hated Shrek, I'd have known better than to pick up Ice Age. As it is, though, my general fondness for CGI films led me to give this one a try. Well, it's no Pixar production, that's for sure.

By that comment, I'm not referring to the quality of the animation, which is perfectly fine, if not mind-blowing. Visually, Ice Age is presented fairly well. The environments have the clean, minimalistic look of a children's picture book, and the animal characters are distinctive and fairly well realized. Some are reasonably realistic (the mammoth, the tiger) while others are pushed toward the comically surreal (the squirrel, the sloth), but the combination works out in the end. The human characters don't work nearly as well, which shouldn't come as a surprise, given how hard it is to animate realistic humans. The slightly stylized appearance looks fine - the animators wisely chose not to go in the direction of photorealism - but their movement seems jerky and awkward, especially compared to the other animals' more natural-looking movement.

So the film's computer graphics are OK. The question, though, is this: how does the story work? Unfortunately, that's where Ice Age falls apart. The overall narrative is simple, which in itself isn't a bad thing for a relatively short film largely aimed at children, but it's also rather saccharine and hackneyed. "Group of quarreling misfits saves baby and learns lesson about friendship in the process." That's a premise that could have been made to work, but it's slapped down here with the subtlety of a mammoth on the move.

Then there's the "quarreling" part. Ice Age is part of a peculiar sub-genre of comedy (unfortunately rather a large one) that seems to be based on the premise that people arguing with each other and insulting each other is inherently really funny. Oh, and that poop jokes are eternally hilarious. This isn't great humor. Really. But that's what we get right from the start in Ice Age: lowest-common-denominator humor, based on the characters bothering each other, making sarcastic remarks, and (just for variety) behaving idiotically.

Parents, do you really want kids to learn the lessons presented in Ice Age? Because the merit of the "let's all get along" message is diluted by the messages that: 1. If you whine enough, you will eventually get what you want; 2. It is funny to annoy other people; 3. It is OK to be annoying and incompetent, because other people will help you out and eventually you will save the day.

Well, the opening animation is kind of cute. And it's only 81 minutes long.

The DVD

The Ice Age: Super Cool Edition is a two-disc set, packaged in a single-wide keepcase.

Video

Ice Age is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 (anamorphically enhanced), with a pan-and-scan version also included. The image quality is excellent, with a very clean, crisp picture on all counts. The white areas are clean and bright, and colors are natural and vibrant. All in all, it looks great.

Audio

The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack offers an solid and engaging listening experience, with consistently good use of surround. The music portion of the soundtrack is nicely balanced with the character voices and sound effects. Dubbed Spanish and French Dolby 2.0 tracks are also included.

Extras

Since this is the "all-new" "Super Cool" edition of Ice Age, one would logically expect a brand-new and really cool set of special features. Unfortunately, that's not the case. This edition repeats most of the special features from the previous Special Edition, with just a few add-ons.

The repeated material includes an audio commentary track by co-directors Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha; an eight-minute set of deleted scenes with optional directors' commentary; a short segment called "Gone Nutty: Scrat's Missing Adventure" featuring five minutes of more footage with Scrat; a three-minute piece with "Sid on Sid" talking about the movie in character; three "Scrat Revealed" promos for the film; "International Ice Age," a short example of the film dubbed in other languages; about 25 minutes of assorted making-of featurettes, most only a minute or so in length; animation progressions for three scenes; trailers; a design gallery; some DVD games; and "Bunny," an animated short feature with an optional introduction and commentary by Chris Wedge.

That doesn't leave much new material. As far as I can tell, the Super Cool edition gives us the "Super Cool View," which is the option to watch the film with "Scrat's Frozen Fun Facts" and "Behind-the-Ice Interviews" accessible to watch in branching mode whenever an acorn appears on the screen. Although it's not clear from the way it's described in the menu, you can also select the segments to watch individually from the scene selection menu in the special features section. Here we get various people involved with the making of the film discussing various aspects of the film and the science behind the film. It's not a bad idea, but it would have been easier to watch as a documentary, rather than split up into little sound bites.

Final thoughts

I didn't like Ice Age at all; it's too much in the "being annoying is funny!" mode of Shrek, and I really can't stand that. However, tastes do vary, especially in humor, so viewers who found that Ice Age tickled their funny bone will be asking whether the Super Cool Edition is worthwhile. If you already own Ice Age, I can't recommend this disc at all: the very slim amount of additional bonus content definitely doesn't merit a repeat buy. If you haven't bought it but plan to, you should probably get either the regular SE or this one, whichever is on sale. Overall, I'll give this a "skip it" rating to reinforce the fact that it offers nothing appreciable over the earlier release, even if you like the movie.