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This is starting to get silly. There shouldn’t be dinosaurs
in a story that takes place during the last ice age. It’s
a well known fact that they were long since extinct at that
point. Yes, I’m well aware that this is a fantasy, and yes,
I’m aware that it’s supposed to be silly and fun and unburdened
with historical accuracy. But come on, even fantasies have
their limits. “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” the third
chapter in the series, is goofy and innocuous, completely
removed from the more clever ideas that made the first two
films enjoyable. ***
Despite the fact that it was released in “eye-popping”
3-D, it has been reduced to the level of your average Saturday
morning cartoon, lacking any real depth and full of thrill-ride
misadventures that don’t really go anywhere. I grant you
that it’s a decent enough film for younger children, but
I fear that the adults in the audience won’t get much out
of it. ***
The film, which reunites all the main characters from
the previous films, is founded on the premise that a handful
of dinosaurs survived extinction and made their home beneath
the snow-covered earth. How this happened is something the
film never bothers to explain, but I guess it doesn’t really
matter. ***
What does matter is that Sid the Sloth (voiced by John
Leguizamo), Manny the Wooly Mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano),
his pregnant wife, Ellie (voiced by Queen Latifah), her
possum brothers Crash and Eddie (Seann William Scott and
Josh Peck), and Diego the Saber-Tooth Tiger (voiced by Denis
Leary) have stumbled onto this hidden world and go on yet
another adventure. New to the series is Buck (voiced by
Simon Pegg), a weasel left stranded in the dinosaur cave.
He has one eye and an Australian accent. If you ever wondered
what Steve Irwin would have been like with a mental disorder,
now’s your chance to find out. ***
The plot: Sid, longing for a family of his own, stumbles
upon three eggs after falling through a patch of thin ice.
He happily claims them as his own--he even draws crude smiley
faces on the shells to give them some personality. Only
when they hatch does he discover that his “children” are
actually T-Rexes. ***
It isn’t long before their real mother ascends and
rounds up her children, taking Sid along with her. It’s
now up to his friends to enter the dinosaur cave and rescue
him. Lo and behold, they’re aided by Buck, a thoroughly
insane adventurer with a leaf for an eye patch and a dinosaur
tooth for a hunting knife. He’s on a quest for his own version
of Moby Dick: A great white dinosaur he has named Rudy.
***
The main story is occasionally interrupted by comedic
vignettes with Scrat the Squirrel, who, of course, is still
on a mission to find an acorn. His frenetic escapades have
been enhanced for this new movie with the addition of Scratté,
a female flying squirrel who’s also in search of an acorn.
They’re simultaneously in love and in competition with each
other, which is kind of funny but also kind of lame. ***
Scrat’s acorn episodes may have been fun at first, but
now they’re just getting old. Think back to the era of the
Warner Bros. cartoons: How many Wile E. Coyote shorts does
it take to make it clear that (a) he’ll always get hurt
by defective Acme products and (b) he’ll never catch the
Road Runner? Not too many, I should think. At a certain
point, you’re just beating a dead horse. ***
The humor is periodically tamed, albeit weakly, by
more serious plot points. Diego, for example, fears he’s
losing his edge, which is why he wants to leave as soon
as Manny’s baby is born. ***
Sid is still being hassled for his more annoying tendencies,
none of which are helped by the fact that he likes kids
so much. ***
Manny is overprotective of Ellie and the baby, so much
so that he begins neglecting his friends. ***
All of this is addressed, but they’re hardly developed.
This is probably why I didn’t feel much of anything for
the characters, certainly not like I did in the first two
films. It now seems as if the filmmakers were more interested
in perfecting the look, and indeed, the computer imagery
and bold color scheme provide great visual appeal (the 3-D
doesn’t do much for them, but then again, 3-D itself hasn’t
been all that impressive lately). ***
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