Another big studio (with the money to spend on hundreds of man hours of development and computer programming) instalment into the relatively recent kids movie phenomenon - the one with cutting edge digital animation and a script that parents know they'll like too. But it falls short of the standards of tight, snappy dialogue and good writing that we came to expect from the likes of Antz, Bug's Life and Shrek.

The age-old road movie gets another go as three loners during the ice age - a sloth, a mammoth and a saber-tooth tiger - deliver a human baby to its tribe. Each has his own agenda that affects the dynamics of their developing friendship which comes to the inevitable test when the agendas are found out.

Where it falls flat is assuming too much scientific reality - like the natural establishment of the food chain - while trying to pass off three animals of different species who can travel together and become companions. If that seems like a strange complaint (it's what Disney have been doing for years) it just doesn't work here where it has elsewhere. Otherwise everything you expect, with strong comic relief by the saber-toothed squirrel searching from one end of the earth to another for a place to hide his acorn.