Horst in Translation ([email protected])
This is a half-hour Christmas special featuring the Ice Age gang, which came out between films 3 and 4. Well.. it's really more of a 20-minute movie actually if you don't count the credits. Manny makes a statement about some of the gang being on Santa's naughty list as they did not behave too well recently, so Sid, Crash, Eddie and Peaches are worried and go on a journey to find Santa, check the list and maybe convince him that they don't belong on the list, so Christmas will happen for them too. On the road to Santa, of course lots of mishaps and entertaining fails occur, some of them involving a clumsy reindeer they meet. It's all Christmasey this time, almost a bit too much. They make their own Christmas tree, keep singing carols and finally not only meet Santa, but destroy Christmas and rescue it and all this in only 20 minutes. It certainly does not come as a surprise as the snowiest and iciest of animation franchises currently also has a Christmas special now. It's all decent entertainment and I liked the fact how Manny basically is taught during this short film that there actually is a Santa and that there also is a naughty list. Of course, in the end everybody is happy and nobody is on the naughty list anymore. By the way, Scrat also gets some screen time right at the beginning mostly, but not so much this time. Still, you can check out his short films for that. Obviously, it's fairly difficult to create any Christmas relevance with a character that does not speak and is only always on the hunt. The rest is very much worth watching though and recommended to the fans of the Ice Age franchise.