Leguizamo: Ice Age saga is animation’s answer to Fast and Furious franchise

ColombianAmerican actor John Leguizamo, who has now lent his voice and charisma to five installments of the Ice Age animated adventure series, said that franchise’s secret was to continue delivering a highquality product with plenty of laughs and “lots of heart.”

“I feel great. If you’d told me 15 years ago that I’d be making my fifth Ice Age film, I wouldn’t have believed you. We’re like the Fast and Furious of animation,” Leguizamo said in an interview with EFE in Los Angeles.

“It’s like a good restaurant. If you take good care of it and maintain the quality, there’s no need for that restaurant to close. We go over everything. We always insert a lot of humor and always add new characters that are very real and very unique,” said the actor, who once again plays the role of the goofy, clumsy and bighearted Sid in the series’ fifth installment, “Ice Age: Collision Course.”

In this latest film, which also features the voices of Ray Romano, Denis Leary, Jennifer Lopez, Simon Pegg and Queen Latifah and has already been released in numerous markets around the world, the prehistoric animals face a new imminent catastrophe: asteroids hurtling toward Earth.

Although the planet’s demise seems imminent, “there’s lots of laughter everywhere” in the film and also “lots of heart,” Leguizamo said.

Referring to the movie’s subplots, he noted that the Ice Age characters were beginning to experience various problems of adulthood.

Manny (Romano), the series’ grumpy but loyal mammoth, is worried about his daughter’s imminent marriage, while Sid “finally meets a girl who loves him for who he is,” Leguizamo said, adding that his character wins others over because he is “transparent” and “optimistic.”

“When we started Ice Age, we were all bachelors and I (Sid) had been cast out by my family. So we created a new family. That’s what’s nice about these films: it doesn’t matter what animal species you are. You can be part of a family if you accept yourself and bring something that benefits everyone,” the actor said.