It doesn't take Ice Age long to win its audience. The opening shots, of an astonishingly unlucky squirrel trying to find a place to bury an acorn, had me laughing loudly. While the main story of the movie is rarely as funny, it's equally endearing and always amusing. Somehow this story, preposterous as it is, works. I enjoy the kind of situations that result from unlikely companions, even outright enemies, each with divergent agendas, who find themselves compelled to journey together. There's an uneasy tension in most of Ice Age, which involves predator and prey at a precarious impasse, that kept me involved.

Note: Don't miss Scrat's Missing Adventure, aka Gone Nutty on the DVD. This segment, along with the first five minutes of Ice Age, are flawlessly timed and establish the makers as truly gifted comic talents.