Ice Age

image for Ice Age

Short takes

Not recommended under 6, PG to 8 due to violence and scary scenes.

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Ice Age
  • a review of Ice Age completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 3 July 2012.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 6 Not recommended due to violence and scary scenes
Children 6-8 Parental guidance recommended due to violence and scary scenes
Children aged 8 and over OK for this age group

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Ice Age
Classification: G
Consumer advice lines: Contains some scenes that may frighten younger children
Length: 81 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

The animated film Ice Age is set 20,000 years in the earth’s past when glaciers, snow and ice cover much of the land. To escape the cold, animals migrate south in search of food and warmer weather.

Not all the animals, however, are heading south. A woolly mammoth named Manny (voice of Ray Romano), who has his own agenda, is heading north accompanied by an accident prone, opportunistic giant sloth named Sid (voice of John Leguizamo), who has angered a couple of rhinos and decides that Manny would make the perfect body guard. 

Meanwhile, a group of sabre-tooth tigers lead by the vengeful Soto (voice of Goran Visnjic) attacks a human camp to capture a human baby alive so that Soto can take his revenge for the hunting of other tigers. While Soto and others attack the men in the camp, sabre-tooth Diego (voice of Denis Leary) corners the mother and her infant on a cliff top above a ranging river, and in a bid to escape, the mother jumps into the raging torrent below. Both mother and infant are swept downstream where they are found by Manny and Sid. Before the exhausted mother disappears beneath the river, she manages to pass her infant over the bewildered animals for safe keeping and Sid decides that the only reasonable thing to do is to take the infant back to the human camp. However before Manny and Sid are able to travel too far, Diego turns up offering his superior tracking skills to find the humans, who he claims have moved camp.  Of course, his true intentions are far from righteous.

As the unlikely trio travel to find the humans they have many encounters and adventures which change each of them in different ways.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Prehistoric times; revenge; extinction; death of family members

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

The film Ice Age contains frequent slapstick violence and some action violence with injury and death but no blood and gore depicted. Examples include:    

  • Sid is charged by two rampaging rhinos, and hides behind Manny with the two rhinos crashing into Manny. A push and shove match develops with the rhinos pushing Manny towards the edge of a cliff. Manny interlocks his tusks with the horns of one of the rhinos swinging the rhino around before releasing it sending the rhino flying through the air, while he uses his tusks like a forklift to pick up the second rhino and catapult it through the air.
  • A sabre-tooth tiger talks about eating a human infant for breakfast and about how a group of hunters killed half of his pack and used their skins to keep warm.
  • A pack of sabre-tooth tigers attacks a group of humans who ward off the tigers with spears; there is some snarling and crunching of spears but no injuries are depicted. A tiger corners a mother holding an infant and she hits the tiger across the face with a wooden club. A short time later the tiger corners the mother holding her infant on top of a cliff overhanging a raging river and she jumps into the water to escape.
  • In one scene played for laughs to depict the extinction of the dodo bird we see: dodo birds falling into a volcanic crater, accidentally stumbling over a cliff face; we see a number of dodos knocked off a cliff face; actual deaths are not depicted.
  • Manny is surrounded and attacked by a Soto and his pack of sabre-tooth tigers. Soto leaps at Manny, but Diego intervenes and attacks Soto. A tiger bites Manny on the foot while Manny uses a tree trunk to knock several tigers over a cliff face. Diego and Soto swipe at each other with their claws, with Soto hurling Diego against a rock knocking him unconscious. Soto is about to swipe Diego’s throat with his claws when Manny intervenes, using his tusks to throw Soto through the air and against a wall of ice. As the tiger lies on the snow, a row of sword-like icicles hanging above him begin to wobble. We do not see the icicles fall, but hear what sounds like swords cutting flesh with the inference clear that he is stabbed and killed by the falling icicles. When we next see Diego he appears to be injured and dying but in a later scene we see Diego alive and limping back to his friends. 

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

  • Through cave paintings that become animated, a story is told of how when Manny was a baby his family was murdered by hunters wielding spears and hurling large boulders down onto a herd of mammoths.
  • Manny, holding a human infant, Sid and Diego are walking across an ice field when a number of volcanic eruptions suddenly occur, with giant spouts of lava and fire erupting into the air. The trio run for their lives as the ice disintegrates around them, leaving them standing on a collapsing ice bridge surrounded by fields of fire. When the trio make a jump to safety, Diego is left hanging by his claws from a collapsing ice bridge with a raging torrent of lava below. Manny uses his trunk to grab hold of Diego and throw him to safety in a nick of time, but Manny then falls from the ice cliff towards the lava below. Fortunately, a geyser propels Manny up into the air and throws him to safety.  

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

Children in this age group may also be scared by the above-mentioned scenes

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children in this age group are unlikely to be disturbed by anything in this movie

Thirteen and overinfo

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Nothing of concern

Product placement

Nothing of concern, although plenty of associated merchandise.

Sexual references

Ice Age contains some low-level comical sexual innuendoes. Examples include:

  • We hear Manny telling Sid “If you find a mate in life you should be loyal and in your case grateful”, to which Sid responds “I think mating for life is stupid, there’s plenty of Sid to go around”.
  • Sid makes a comment about a female sloth going “praying mantis on me”.

 

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some sexual activity in this movie, including:

  • Mild flirting between Sid and female sloths

Use of substances

None of concern

Coarse language

There are some occasional name calling and putdowns. Examples include:

  • overgrown weasel; jerk; stinking drawl face; bone bag; little squirt; wormy; lumpy 

In a nutshell

Ice Age is an animated comedy adventure family film targeting children. The film is clever, funny and at times emotional, with some great characters. Although a little predictable, the storyline will easily entertain the target audience and well as older viewers. Parents of younger viewers should be cautioned that the film does contain scary moments. Under 7s may find the conflict between characters a little too intense and some of the film’s themes rather disturbing - animals that seek revenge via eating a baby; death of family members.      

The main messages from this movie are:

  • The importance of family
  • Supporting and looking out for each other regardless of differences

 Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • Self sacrifice, cooperation and compassion: On a number of occasions Manny displayed self sacrifice by both putting the need of other above his own and by placing his own safety and life at risk to save others.
  • Cooperation: It was by cooperating that Manny, Diego and Sid were able to overcome a variety of obstacle throughout their journey and succeed in their mission.
  • Manny demonstrated great compassion towards the human baby in his care even though adult humans were responsible for the death of his own family.

 This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

  • Parents may wish to discuss how the film represents the need for individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures to be compassionate and understanding towards each other, and how these qualities can result in diverse groups overcoming insurmountable odds.