First things first! The three six year-olds who allowed me to accompany them to the screening of Ice Age 2: The Meltdown loved it. That's all that counts; they came out fully entertained, laughing and giggling at all the gags – and we only had one toilet break. That's enough of a recommendation to get parents to take their kids.

Frankly I didn't like the first Ice Age. It left me, for want of a better analogy, lukewarm. I didn't care about the characters, the baby was no Boo (Monsters Inc.), the gags were forced, and the best bit about the film was Scrat the squirrel.

In Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, the sub-zero heroes from Ice Age are back: Manny the woolly mammoth, Sid the sloth, Diego the sabre-toothed tiger, and the hapless prehistoric squirrel/rat known as Scrat. In the new film the Ice Age is coming to an end, and the animals are delighting in the melting paradise that is their new world.

Our trio is still together and enjoying the perks of their now melting world. Manny may be ready to start a family, but nobody has seen another mammoth for a long time; Manny thinks he may be the last one. That is until he miraculously finds Ellie (voiced by Queen Latifah), the only female mammoth left in the world. Their only problems: They can't stand each other – and Ellie somehow thinks she's a possum!

Manny, Sid, and Diego quickly learn that the warming climate has one major drawback: A huge glacial dam holding off oceans of water is about to break, threatening the entire valley. The only chance of survival lies at the other end of the valley in the form of a prehistoric Noah's Ark. The film also presents the continuing adventures, or misadventures, of Scrat, who has an even larger role this time.

While Manny pursues romance, Sid, who in the first film was the target of everyone's jokes and was never taken seriously, yearns for respect – and he just might get it. Diego, a once-fierce sabre-toothed tiger, discovers he has a fear that gives him more than a little trouble in their new rapidly-melting world: he's afraid of water.

It's obvious that this film has extremely high production values, and they don't come cheap! 60 animators worked on this feature compared to 35 on the first movie. The whole proposition from the studios used to be that CGI features were cheaper to make because the numbers involved in the productions went from 500 down to 150. The studios now appear to be ramping up crews and trying to outdo each other with quality of story, characters, and once again the quality of the animation and visuals on-screen.

Who knows where this may end, but the moviegoer should end up with a better quality 90 minutes of entertainment.

Rated TBC (see IFCO website for details)
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown is released on 7th April 2006.
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown – Official website