Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)

There's a moment early in Ice Age: The Meltdown where you settle back into your seat, recognise all your old pals, laugh at a gag or two, and think: yeah, this'll do. And for a while, it does do. But somewhere around the halfway point, a nagging feeling creeps in that you can't quite shake. You've been here before. Not just in the sense that it's a sequel, but in the sense that this film is actively, consciously recycling the warmth of the original rather than generating new warmth of its own.

I'll be straight with you: I've seen this more times than any adult human should have to. My kid is obsessed with it. So I've had ample opportunity to study exactly where it works and where it doesn't, the way a mechanic gets to know a car that keeps coming back into the garage. And my verdict, after all those viewings, is that The Meltdown is a perfectly watchable, occasionally funny, ultimately slightly deflating follow-up to a film I genuinely love. If you want to know how I felt about that original, check out my review of Ice Age (2002), because the gap in quality between the two is worth understanding.

The premise this time involves the prehistoric gang navigating a giant flood caused by melting ice. It's a reasonable enough engine for an animated adventure, and there are decent set-pieces scattered throughout. The animation holds up well, the character designs are as appealing as ever, and the voice cast brings the energy. None of that is really the problem.

The problem is the looseness of it all. The first film had a surprisingly clean emotional throughline holding everything together. This one feels like it's been assembled from a checklist of things that worked before: broad physical comedy, heartfelt moments between the main trio, a running joke stretched across the whole runtime. The broad humour lands often enough to keep the kids happy, clearly, given the repeat viewings I've been subjected to. But there's a messiness to the pacing and structure that the original didn't have. Scenes go on a beat or two too long. The new characters introduced don't quite earn their place in the same way.

And yet. Scrat. Every single time that prehistoric squirrel appears in pursuit of his acorn, the film becomes something else entirely. There's a purity to those sequences, a kind of beautiful, silent-comedy commitment to a single joke, that makes you wish the whole film had that focus. Scrat is essentially a Looney Tunes character who wandered into the wrong franchise and became the best thing in it. I'd watch a full Scrat short film without hesitation. The feature around him? I'm a bit more ambivalent.

Look, I don't want to be too hard on it. It's a kids' film, and by kids' film standards it's fine. More than fine, if you're six years old. The characters are likeable, there are genuine laughs, and it moves along at a decent clip. If your little one wants to watch it on a rainy Saturday, you're not going to suffer. Much.

But sequels have a responsibility not just to repeat what came before, and The Meltdown doesn't always meet that responsibility. It's more comfortable than it is inspired. Having also sat through Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) and the increasingly weary Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), I can tell you this is where the franchise's sense of direction first starts to wobble, even if it hadn't fully lost the plot yet.

Two and a half stars. Scrat gets four on his own. The rest of the film is borrowing from him.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2006  | Watched: 2025-07-21

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Disney Plus · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Hulu · Disney Plus
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Carlos Saldanha: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
More with Ray Romano: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) · Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) · Ice Age (2002) · Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More family: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Wonder (2017) · Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anastasia (1997)