Manny (Ray Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo) and Diego (Denis Leary) have found a place to live, but it's not going to last long. Their new home is about to be flooded and the entire group has to move on in order to survive. But along the way, Manny finds that he isn't the only mammoth left when he discovers Ellie (Queen Latifah).

I honestly don't know where to begin with this movie. I guess the best thing to do is to compare it to the first. The animation is far better here and that's pretty much the only praise I can give it because nothing else has changed. They're still pulling the same lame, easy jokes and throwing in jokes that serve no purpose to the story. But it's far worse here, with a good three-fourths of the film being completely worthless and feeling tacked together in the most awkward way possible. This feels like a letter of resignation from a disgruntled film editor who set out to make this film as incoherent as possible. The worst is that nearly a full half of the film is filler via Scrat (Chris Wedge), the silent squirrel-thing that seems to be the selling point of this franchise. Honestly, I like Scrat in small doses. The shorts they've released featuring him are fine, but having this much of him in a movie is tiring and gets old really quick.

Our three main characters have not grown much at all, save Manny being easier to get along with and Diego being a little bit less of a jerk. The worst, again, is Sid, who spends the movie as the moral compass instead of strictly being comic relief (although there's plenty of him getting knocked around like always). Why isn't he the zany "lovable" character this time? Why, it's because we have two new nuisances, of course! Eddie (Josh Peck) and Crash (Seann William Scott) are just as annoying as their names make them sound. They're little possums who adopted Ellie when she was little and treat her like a sister, and they're also annoying little pests who just fill time and do stupid and annoying things. I will never understand writing characters to be intentionally annoying, because that's all they end up being is annoying. But this whole movie is annoying so it's not entirely their fault.

So okay, this is pretty much your typical cash-in animated movie, made for a quick buck and lacking pretty much any heart whatsoever. And then you get to the political message. This is one of the most awkwardly offensive films I have ever seen, and I've seen The Birth of a Nation. This movie is about a bunch of animals living in a giant "bowl," essentially, that is about to flood and possibly kill hundreds of thousands, and all of this is played up for laughs, with some characters even refusing to leave their homes. Sound familiar? You see, it's funny because a year before this movie came out, almost two thousand people died in Hurricane Katrina. Hilarious, right!? Seriously, why this topic? Why would they put a character in the movie, a vulture voiced by Will Arnett, whose sole purpose is to get excited about the oncoming slaughter? It's sickening and confusing, but above all it's just not the right place for this. They make the comparison very blatant, to the point that it almost seems like they wanted to offend people. Whatever the case, screw you Peter Gaulke and Gerry Swallow for coming up with this incredibly insensitive story for a kids' movie.

Anyway, yeah, I don't recommend it.

Final Verdict: