As the week of May 7-13 became history, the fresh list for the opening week box office rankings of North America's 2004 summer season was released. The champion wasn't the $160 million cost "Van Helsing," but Fire & Blue Sky's "Ice Age 2", a film that could be called an expected dark horse. For its opening week, this animated comedy crazily raked in $75.93 million in 3,053 theaters, surpassing its production budget.
"If you can say Blue Sky Studios has proven anything up to this point, it's simply that their visual effects have improved; but frankly, in terms of storytelling, there's nothing there," "Cute and funny for kids, but they can't even maintain these bland jokes for 90 minutes," "I don't know what happened to the Ice Age team; the first one had some charm, whereas this sequel is rotten,"... However, in the world of film criticism, Richard Roeper, Roger Ebert, Roger Moore, Stephen Hunter, and other well-known critics all bestowed the green splat of Rotten Tomatoes.
