It's the start of spring. Sid is opening an egg-sitting business. Manny and Diego are not impressed. Surprisingly, it becomes a success. Pirate bunny Squint wants revenge after the boys sank his ship during Continental Drift. While Sid is sleeping, Squint steals all the eggs. This becomes the world's first egg hunt as Manny promises to retrieve them with help from Squint's brother Clint.

I like Continental Drift but this one falls back a little bit. The drama needs to be higher. There is nothing wrong but it's not great either. The stakes are not that high when the eggs don't belong to the main cast.

This twenty-minute "Ice Age" movie is just using the opportunity of holidays to get a few more dollars based on its former glory. Although the idea is not bad, the cartoon is totally uninteresting. However, with a good screenwriter, the story has the potential to develop into a quality full-length film.

4/10

Of course I realize Ice Age: The Great Egg-Scapade is an attempt to cash in on a popular film franchise by taking advantage of a major holiday (Easter this time, comparable to the previous 2011 Yuletide special Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas). It's easy to be cynical about the idea, and having a bad cough when I watched this, it hurt to laugh. Yet in spite of myself- I ended up chuckling anyway.

There is some definite cynicism in the hollow Ellie/Peaches subplot, a typical bit about a teenager drifting from family, but that's a tiny part of the short. The bulk draws on the pirate rabbit from Continental Drift returning, seeking revenge for his lost ship. Surprisingly, using a pirate treasure map story to explain the origins of the Easter egg hunt works out well. There is a genuine chuckle in Manny expressing outrage someone would paint and hide an egg, as if it were a heinous criminal act. The Raiders of the Lost Ark parody we get during the egg hunt is a definite highlight. Scrat's latest mishap with his acorn is worth a chuckle too. A thankfully brief, but still entertaining, Easter special is a worthy addition to the list of Ice Age shorts.