Franchise Starter

2002 · Chris Wedge · 81 min · Animation / Comedy

Ice Age sent a grumpy mammoth, a motormouth sloth, and a conflicted saber-tooth across a freezing world to return a human baby, and built one of animation's most durable franchises on the trip, plus a squirrel. Scrat's acorn obsession became instant slapstick canon, the central trio's bickering warmth still lands, and the finale earns its lump in the throat honestly. The early CG shows its age, the plot is a straight line, and the sequels spent the goodwill down over a decade. Judged as the 2002 original alone, it remains a warm, funny, compact family movie that knew exactly what it was doing.

2010 · Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud · 95 min · Animation / Comedy

Despicable Me introduced Gru, the minions, and the adoption plot that softens a supervillain one bedtime story at a time, and launched the most commercially unstoppable franchise in animation from a studio nobody had heard of. Steve Carell's accent-forward villain works because the film commits to the emotional arc underneath the gadgetry, three orphan girls dismantling a bad man's defenses with ballet recitals and goodnight kisses. Viewed before minion fatigue set in, the yellow henchmen are inspired slapstick seasoning rather than the entree. The villain plot is scaffolding and the sentiment is engineered. The engineering works.

2005 · Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath · 86 min · Animation / Comedy

Madagascar is the 2005 DreamWorks comedy about four pampered Central Park Zoo animals shipwrecked into actual nature, and its reputation rests on a simple arithmetic, a serviceable main story orbited by supporting players so funny they annexed the franchise. Ben Stiller's homesick lion and Chris Rock's motormouthed zebra carry a fish-out-of-water plot with a surprisingly dark hunger subplot, while the psychotic penguins and King Julien walk away with every scene they touch. Slighter than the era's animation peaks and thinner in its middle, it remains reliable family comfort with an all-time bench.