Blue Sky Studios closed on April 10th last year, but last week we got a fitting goodbye a year on.  Scrat, the star of a running gag that carried through five Ice Age movies finally chose to eat the acorn that he so hilariously tried to retain/regain/store/protect throughout that same cinematic quintet.  Blue Sky Studios made 13 feature films, though I must acknowledge having not watched “The Peanuts Movie” and “Ferdinand” and only half of “Spies in Disguise” which is why the latter in particular won’t appear in this, my five favourite Blue Sky Studios movies. And while it is in no discernible order, that only relates to four of the five because I do have an out-and-out favourite on this occasion:

Ice Age – Continental Drift (2012) – this is the one that the Yalden family has watched the most together and it’s just delightful.  It’s the fourth instalment of the Ice Age series and while not the best, it’s definitely the most fun including the best villain of the five movies – Captain Gutt – gleefully voice by Peter Dinklage while the Wanda Sykes/John Leguizamo dynamic as Granny and Sid the Sloth is hilariously cool

Horton Hears A Who (2008) – so it’s Doctor Suess and they had me at that but here’s the voice cast … Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Will Arnett, Seth Rogan, Isla Fisher, Amy Poehler, Jonah Hill and AND the great Carol Burnett … and that’s all you really need to know. It’s awesome!

Rio (2011) – this is just so vibrant in terms of the music, the colours, the propulsion of the film even if the storyline pretty simplistic, it’s still done really, really well, and its features our own Jermaine Clement who plays an evil cockatoo named Nigel cos nothing say bad guy like a cockatoo 

Epic (2013) – Chris Wedge returns to direct for the first time since the first two Blue Sky Studios movies and nails it.  Visually very different to everything that preceded it, mainly because we are dealing with characters with human features for the first time since the original Blue Sky Studios movie and the animation had advanced massively too.  It’s based on a really cool children’s book by William Joyce called “The Leafmen and the Brave Good Bugs” (Joyce co-wrote the screenplay) features a score composed by the great Danny Elfman and is a great action, adventure, animated feature.  And finally …

Ice Age (2002) – the original, the best, my favourite and I try desperately hard not to have favourites in this sort of thing.  It’s the best story for me and it’s the most emotional of the BSS films because of that story (the baby Manny, Sid and Diego find was because a mother sacrifices herself to save her child) Its very grounded in the serious task that this group of misfits undertakes which is to return the child to “its herd” and at the same time said misfits form their own family.  The comedy hits, the drama hits, the voice-casting is bang on and it’s so easy to see why this spawned four sequels and established Blue Sky Studios on the animated film landscape.