Ice Age Blu-ray

Ice Age

 (2002)

Adventure | Animation | Comedy | Family



They came... they thawed... they conquered the hearts of audiences everywhere in the coolest animated adventure of all time! Heading south to avoid the bad case of global frostbite, a group of migrating misfit creatures embark on a hilarious quest to reunite a human baby with his tribe. Featuring an all-star voice cast, including Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary, ICE AGE is "a pure delight" (New York Daily News) for all ages!

For more details about Ice Age on Blu-ray, see the Ice Age Blu-ray Review

Starring: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Goran Visnjic, Jack Black
Directors: Carlos Saldanha, Chris Wedge

Ice Age Blu-ray, Video Quality

 


Ice Age arrives on Blu-ray with a fantastic 1080p high definition image. Framed at 1.85:1, the movie is practically reference material through and through. While it doesn't quite measure up to the likes of Ratatouille and Cars, it nevertheless has a pleasant, clean, and crisp appearance that recreates the Ice Age experience just about as well as one could hope for. Color reproduction is accurate with browns, tans, and blues the predominant shades. A brief scene in chapter six showing Sid eating an apple really struck me with the well-defined colors present—the red of the apple, the white-blended-to-faint-yellow of its inside, the purple shades of the leaves on the trees, and the colors of the characters—all made for a nice scene showcasing the strength of the disc. Obviously, being digital, the image is never plagued by anything inherent in film (grain, splotches, speckles, hair, whatever).

Perhaps the only thing holding this one back a bit from looking quite as good as more recent animated films is the somewhat cruder animation seen here compared to films like Cars and Ratatouille. There is a definite lack of fine detail in the animation. Hair looks like a clump rather than the intricate, fine, seemingly individually fine-tuned hair seen in those films, or even the second Ice Age film. Obviously, this is not a knock at all on the movie or the image, just a result of the limitation of the technology available all the way back in the ancient days of 2002. Ice Age still looks great nevertheless.

Ice Age Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 


It should come as no surprise that, being a Fox Blu-ray title, Ice Age comes with a DTS- HD MA 5.1 sound mix. It should also come as no surprise that it sounds fantastic. The first thing I noticed was a fine bit of ambience. The wind blew ever so subtly in the rear, making you almost feel cold. Bass was strong and precise, as was the imaging of each sound (an echo in chapter 12 sounded as good as real life). Highs were crisp, such as heard during the sound of ice cracking. The midrange was also solid. Glacier movement (I’ve heard one in real life) sounded spot-on accurate. The movie features a very fun score and made me want to buy the soundtrack. A scene where rain and hail fell during a storm sounded fantastic and engrossing. Dialogue was natural and well-placed, emanating mostly from the center with pleasing realism, definitely aided by the fine voice work of Romano, Leguizamo, and Leary. Unlike some other movies, such as Hitman, dialogue came through the rear sounding both natural and precise, especially the “prepare for the ice age!” line by a dodo birds in chapter 8. I was very pleased with the effort on this mix, and as always, I'm more than happy to praise Fox for their use of DTS-HD MA, and I hope it becomes more widely available so more Blu-ray fans have the opportunity to hear what they're missing on these first-rate Fox titles.

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