It was perhaps inevitable while watching Ice Age: The Meltdown that I would find parallels between it and our current concerns over global warming. Just this past winter, temperatures in Canada were unseasonably high in many regions, breaking many long-held records (some dating back to when records first started being kept). Beyond our borders, anxiety abounds as doomsayers portend grave peril in the foreseeable future if we do not change our habits; others, less optimistic, already place us in an unalterable predicament of decline. All things considered, the choice to set the sequel to 2002's original Ice Age during the beginning stages of Earth's transition from our last ice age to our warmer and more familiar climate seemed curious if only because it would be tinged with an amount of sadness unusual for a typical children's film, although I suppose it supplied it with a suitable crisis. Happily, The Meltdown isn't grim to any lasting degree. In fact, it is so sunny and good-natured that I would have expected R.E.M.'s grating ditty about feelin' fine despite The End as we know it as a tactical pop-culture underscore, yet considerate enough of our sensibilities to have avoided using it. Never mind that we know the eventual woeful fate of such species as the mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger. Like the first film, The Meltdown is an endearing fantasy about the friendly souls from whom we inherited our planet that is simply and sweetly told.

When last we saw Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano), Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo), and Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Dennis Leary), they were returning a human baby they had found to its parents, rescuing it from the impending ice age. This time out the ice is melting with a new age dawning, and everyone is in danger of drowning when the water level rises and floods the valley they inhabit. Scoping them out and taunting them all the while is a vindictive and hungry vulture (Will Arnett), and from his bird's eye view he's able to approximate three days before the ice melts and washes out every living creature below. Hot on their tails as well are a couple of vicious, carnivorous fish who are frozen in ice at the beginning but are soon thawed and released back into the wild. With nothing left to do but flee, our furry crew start hoofing it toward safer territory. This takes a little extra effort as each of them has some sort of hang-up which is slowing them down. Sid can't gain the respect of his friends, who find him inane and foolish; Diego substitutes a fear of water for a thorn in his paw; and Manny, believing himself to be the last of his species, is suddenly confronted by Ellie (Queen Latifah), a female mammoth whom he can befriend and repopulate with - if only she didn't already think she was a possum. Used to travelling under the blanket of darkness at night with her two possum "brothers," Crash and Eddie (Sean William Scott and Josh Peck), Ellie figures they can expedite their journey by joining Manny and his gang, able to protect them during the day. Yet, personalities clash, as they are bound to do in such situations, and survival quickly becomes a matter of solidarity and trust between each creature. Either everyone makes it, or nobody does.

The one character I've failed to mention thus far is arguably the most recognizable and charming in the franchise. Scrat (Chris Wedge), the hapless little scamp eternally denied his meagre acorn but faithfully committed to getting it, is a much-needed source of comic relief, appearing at odd intervals throughout the film for brief sketches that harken back to the classic Roadrunner cartoons and are worthy of standing on their own (his first appearance was actually in the Oscar-nominated short Gone Nutty). Though they are loosely related to the general story (except for one crucial scene at the end), they keep its pace brisk by shifting focus from its often meandering and predictable resolution arc. While they may be predictable in their own right (surely Scrat won't be allowed to actually savour his quarry), they remain vibrant for the extraordinary lengths and means by which his best efforts are defeated by lack of foresight and dumb luck. So much is hilariously made of this poor guy's quest for a nut, but considerably little made of Manny and his friends' entire trek across a vast and treacherous terrain toward an uncertain conclusion. For those of us who are fairly certain, or don't care, that Manny and Ellie will fall in love, The Meltdown doesn't offer much else in the way of stimulation besides Scrat and some truly beautiful animation. Instead of exploiting the unique and truly adventurous nature of a world undergoing global warming, or making connections to today's present calamity for the sake of children viewers, the film suffers for the drab and uninspiring ways it handles each of its conflicts. Compared with more imaginative and challenging children's fare, it feels about as hackneyed and stale as its characters are ancient.

Oh, but I couldn't help but smile all the same throughout The Meltdown. Ultimately, it remains a winner for the positive values that are portrayed and reinforced, and for that I cautiously recommend it. While any overall excitement to be felt is reserved mainly for younger audiences, for whom this sort of plot is novel, it still managed to evoke the innocence of those pre-"hip" cartoons I enjoyed as a child. Yes, it unapologetically avoids complicating its story and its characters with undue metaphorical import, which is to say some grown-ups will likely find it tiresome. However, it earnestly cares about them and counts on children's inquisitiveness and interest in its basic issues to sustain it. So sad, then, that the demise of the Ice Age may have exhausted all future stories for the gang. At least there is the gleaming hope that the continued episodic foibles of Scrat may live on and transcend the franchise to delirious highs.

(Ice Age: The Meltdown is currently playing at the Crystal Palace 8 Cinemas, located at 499 Paul St. in Dieppe, and at the Empire 8, Trinity Drive cinema, located at 125 Trinity Drive in Moncton.)