Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Review by Jason Donner

 

Aside from being the worst history lesson since 10,000 BC, I can't really think of anything overtly wrong with Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs except for the fact that the formula used in every single movie is getting staler and older.   Unfortunately, that one thing is a big, big factor.

Manny and Ellie (Ray Ramano and Queen Latifah), happily a couple by this point, are expecting their first child together and Manny is excited and looking foreword to the new arrival.  Diego (Denis Leary), however, fears that he's loosing his edge and with the little fat ball of fur on the way, he decides to leave the group and go off on his own.  Sid (John Leguizamo) feels left out and alone until he finds three eggs under the ice and decides to adopt them and become their mommy.

You can see where this is already old since both Sid and Diego's problems have already been addressed in the first two movies.  Can we please have new personal crises?

Naturally, it isn't long until the egg's mother comes looking for them - a giant tyrannosaurus rex who grabs the eggs and Sid and heads into a cavern below the ice where dinosaurs still live.  Now, it's up to the Ice Age gang to rescue him with the help of a crazed weasel voiced by Simon Pegg.

While this movie does plod heavily into the world of monotony and tired storylines, there's still enough of that spark from the first two movies to make the entire affair nice and enjoyable.  Heck, I just love these characters.  I've loved them since the first movie and adding dinosaurs into the mix may not make a lot of logical sense, but since when has logic been a good thing to introduce into a movie about talking animals?

Simon Pegg steals the movie this time around as a genuinely funny character named Buck who has survived the underground dinosaur world for a while and who hunts a ferocious dino he has named "Rudy."

Heck, even the possum pair of Crash and Eddie weren't at their most annoying, so that buys a few points for the movie.

The jokes don't always hit the target like they should and the movie seems to rely a little too much with the fact that it's in 3-D which makes it seem like the animators are showing off a little too much if you're watching it in only two dimensions, but Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a worthy installment in the Ice Age trilogy.  If 20th Century Fox decides that this is the last one, it's a perfectly sensible place to leave these characters.