No Time For Nuts

The No Time For Nuts Movie
Film Information Director Chris Renaud Mike Thurmeier Producer John C. Donkin Lori Forte Chris Wedge (executive) Carlos Saldanha (executive) Christopher Meledandri (executive) Writer Chris Renaud (story) Music Christopher Ward Release Date 2006 Country USA Language English Rating G

No Time for Nuts is an Academy Award-nominated, a CGI-animated short film from Blue Sky Studios (20th Century Fox Animation), starring Scrat of Ice Age fame, premiering on the DVD release of Ice Age: The Meltdown, much in the same vein as Gone Nutty on the previous movie's DVD release. It was nominated for an Oscar in the "Animated Short" category for 2007, though it never received a billing with a Fox feature film. It also won "Best Animated Short Subject" at the Annie Awards.

Due to the time-travelling theme of the short, it is not considered canon (possibly a strange dream of Scrat's).

A 4-D version of the short film is in select theme parks and aquariums. This version has the film converted into 3-D, has extra and alternate scenes, different soundtracks, and is longer than the original short.

Plot

Original Version

Scrat, while trying to find a place to bury his acorn, finds a buried Time Machine next to the ice-encased body of a time traveller, who appears to be Albert Einstein. He accidentally activates the machine, sending the acorn to somewhere. Scrat gets mad and tries to beat up the time machine, but it sends him to the Middle Ages. After the acorn becomes wedged under a rock, Scrat uses Excalibur found in stone (like in The Sword in the Stone) as a lever to move the rock. He pulls out the sword, but now finds himself under attack by a group of unseen archers. He grabs the acorn (now dislodged from the rock) and time machine and races off to find cover, only to hide in the barrel of a lit cannon, which fires him into the path of the incoming arrows. The time machine teleports the acorn, and Scrat manages to activate the machine just in time.

He materializes in an arena in Ancient Rome. Scrat reaches for his acorn, but is dragged off when his tail is caught in a chariot pulled by a horse. Scrat manages to free himself and introduces himself to the crowd like a champion, proudly holding up his acorn, but hears the growl of a lion coming from a tunnel. He activates the time machine agai, and lands apparently back in his home time. He is overjoyed, but he soon learns that he is really in 1912 on the iceberg which the Titanic in 1997, when he sees the ship heading towards him. The time machine is activated again, and Scrat finds himself in time of the first Ice Age film, where he encounters his past self. Past and Present Scrat fight for the acorn until the time machine sends the acorn away. (Manny, Sid, Diego, and Roshan make a cameo appearance).

The time machine fires, sending Scrat to a flurry of different, dangerous locations (dematerialising shortly before he would have otherwise been killed): Under a launching rocket in the Space Race, a darkened jewelry store with a diamond in what appears to be the age of gangsters (the laser alarms go off), a girl's locker room at a sports arena (where he got hit by a hairbrush), the height of the French Revolution (where he appears under the guillotine), during Benjamin Franklin's electricity experiment, in front of a wrecking ball in a demolition job, in front of the Hiroshima Disaster at the end of World War II, on the tracks of a steam train in the Wild West, and in front of Michelangelo's David in the Italian Renaissance, Scrat's head obscuring the statue's groin (this does not put him in danger, but he is discomforted). Frustrated, Scrat punches the machine, which sends him into a strange realm of floating timepieces. Scrat spots his acorn and grabs it, but is sucks into a wormhole, along with his acorn and the time machine.

The wormhole lands Scrat in front of an enormous oak tree. Overjoyed at the sight of so many nuts, he tosses away his acorn, which activates the time machine. Before he can be swept through time, Scrat beats the time machine into submission. Scrat attempts to remove the nuts from the tree, but discovers that it is only a statue, with a plaque on it reading, "Here Stood the Last Oak Tree." Scrat realizes that he is in the far future, where oak trees (and acorns) are extinct. He makes a dash for his acorn, but the time machine manages to transport the acorn away one last time before collapsing into bits. Stranded in the acorn-less future, Scrat lets out a scream of frustration, ending the film and the zapped acorn ends up in the credits of the film.

Albert Einstein frozen

4-D Version

Scrat was chasing his acorn down a slope, rolling as snow ball, and when he finally caught the nut he could see Sid talking about Time Travel to Manny and Diego.

After the first part of the main events, He finds himself back in the Dinosaur World where he's ambushed by Meat-Eating Dinosaurs, including a Guanlong. Scrat was able to free himself from being caught by 3 Quetzalcoatluses, and after dodging Brachiosauruses, but just as he was eaten by a Tyrannosaurus, the time machine teleported the two items, and Scrat along with the Dinosaurs skeleton to a museum in the nighttime where people keep a collection of Dinosaur bones. There, Scrat saw the bones of himself and the acorn, and a scene of the Ice Age with Manny, Diego, and Sid. Scrat threw bones at the glass by trying to break it, one of them hit the Time Machine, and Scrat ran into Manny when Scrat found himself in the first Ice Age movie. There, he encounters his past self. Past and Present fought until Sid was distracted by the Acorn, the time machine teleported him and Scrat to a dance room, where Sid was dancing with Scrat, they, then, found themselves in the construction of Great Wall of China. Scrat tried to get the Acorn back from Sid's mouth he ate, when Sid, who's too busy dancing, broke a stick which caused a basket to fall on Scrat.

Scrat went back to the first Ice Age movie where the original present and Past Scrat were fighting for the acorn. He interrupted the fight, causing the Acorn and the Original Time machine and Acorn got teleported off to somewhere else. The current present Scrat was able to escape with the firing time machine from the original present and past, who bumped into each other, to a flurry of different and dangerous locations (dematerialising shortly before he would have otherwise been killed). The rest of the main events continues.

Trivia

• This is the first Ice Age short to be designated an MPAA rating, which is G.
• This Ice Age short marks the first time Scrat screams in fustration to close the film.
• This is the first Ice Age short Film "Twentieth Century Fox Animation presents" credit.

Quotes

Sid: That's what I'm calculating. Maybe we live in a universe of infinite possibilities with space and time stretching in four dimensions.

Manny: What're you talking about?

Sid: We might just be like little specs of matter floating in a timeless soup, and we can bump into ourselves around the next snowbank.

Manny: Okay, good luck with the slow-descent into madness.

Sid: Hmm. Hey. There's probably a whole planet of Sids out there.

Diego: That's a little disturbing.

Goofs

• In real life, the Titanic hit the iceberg on its starboard (right) side. But in the short, it hits the iceberg head-on.

External links

• No Time for Nuts Official Blue Sky Studios Website
• Co-director Chris Renaud on No Time for Nuts Animated News & Views interview
• No Time for Nuts at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• No Time for Nuts at the Internet Movie Database
• No Time for Nuts 4D on Youtube