A warm and fuzzy sequel

Rest assured, the helpless, hapless squirrel-rat, Scrat, is back in the sequel “Ice Age: The Meltdown,” which opens Friday.

Scrat was initially created to bookend the original 2002 computer-animated hit, “Ice Age.” But when he became an audience favorite in the film’s trailer, directors Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha expanded his role. Scrat (voiced by Wedge) even starred in the Oscar-nominated spinoff short, “Gone Nutty.”

Now, in “The Meltdown,” Scrat is integral to the plot. “We knew from the get-go that this guy would have a special role” in the sequel, said Saldanha, who directed “Meltdown.”

“Because everybody wants to see the guy, and we might as well just use him to help us in the story we are trying to tell.”

Indeed, the fact that the ice age is ending doesn’t stop Scrat from trying to retrieve a solitary nut. With the determination of Wile E. Coyote, Scrat climbs icy cliffs, karate chops piranhas in the ocean and battles a hungry baby bird for the precious morsel of food.

In the new film, Manny (Ray Romano) the wooly mammoth, Sid (John Leguizamo) the sloth and Diego (Denis Leary) the saber-toothed tiger are still enjoying life in the melting world.

But when they learn that the valley will soon be flooded, they set out with the rest of the animals to find safer ground. Along the way, Sid gains the respect that he’s long wanted and Diego overcomes his phobia of water. “Meltdown” also tones down the testosterone level of “Ice Age.”

“The first one was very much a guy movie -- there were a lot of male characters,” Saldanha said. “So with this new one, we thought it was about time to introduce a woman, a character with a strong personality who could stay among these guys and stand up for herself.”

Enter Ellie (Queen Latifah) as a love interest for Manny. Though she’s a mammoth, Ellie actually believes she’s a possum, having grown up with the wisecracking daredevil rodent “brothers” Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck).

In “Ice Age,” said Saldanha, each of the characters was “trying to find each other and becoming a family. This one is more about their individual struggles to overcome their fears and to help each other and work together.”

-- Susan King