Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Review By B. Alan Orange

Ice Age 1 must not be a very good movie. I own it. Its open. Yet, I don’t remember ever watching the silly thing. I certainly couldn’t tell you what its about. The only moment that sticks in my mind is that grotesque squirrel-like creature trying to make love to a nut. It worked as a ten minute short, and it keeps working, all the way up through the end of this third installment. Yes, the other characters in Dawn of the Dinosaurs seem wrapped around this muted idea, and thrown in as filler. I suspect I’m not the only one who keeps wishing we could just get back to McSquirelly and his elusive acorn. Sad thing is, you couldn’t build an entire movie around that quaint concept. Without the breaks in action, it would get old and stale. Fast. I guess that’s why Scrat is buried deep in an unnecessary plot about the melting ice age. Having to whor* through unnecessary landscapes makes his tiny adventures all the more manageable, exciting, and alive. It allows us to walk out of the theater remembering at least one moment of truth. And hey, this time, that fugly Squirrel gets a girlfriend.

Sort of.

I’ve got some advice for you. Never, ever sit in the first couple of rows when paying to see a 3D movie. It will render the artifice less than proficient. Either that, or I am no longer able to see and acknowledge that third dimension. Maybe I have lazy eyes. Or maybe this variation of the special effect just sucks. I don’t see any immediate reason why this adventure has to be punched and pulled out towards our children’s’ eyes. Do you? The process does little to hurt or help the final outcome of the film itself. It isn’t necessary to the plot, and only seems to be in place to keep up with current trends. That makes me hate it a little bit more than I normally would.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs isn’t one of these lofty “adults will love it too” enterprises. Aside from a few out of place jokes about therapy and homosexuality, most of this stuff is aimed directly at the kids. It’s like some dusty old K. Gordon Murray Saturday afternoon matinee. Guess what? I’m ecstatic about that. Animators in this day and age try too hard to please everyone in the house. (Turnip Truck) that business. Sometimes, eight year olds need their own thing. You’d actually feel comfortable dropping your brood off here while heading off to shop at the mall. When was the last time you felt comfortable doing that? Seriously, were you going to let your sons and daughters wallow through the miscarriage and death that permeate the first twelve minutes of Pixar’s UP all alone? No. That’s both irresponsible parenting and forced ticket sales. I bet you didn’t even know that. If you get trapped within these sugarcoated walls, though, don’t fret. Ice Age 3 moves at a fairly brisk pace, and it will certainly appeal to old Merry Melody aficionados. The Scrat segments work like tiny ten-minute visages extracted from some loose Looney Tunes collection. If nothing else, you’ll be able to enjoy those for the time being. It won’t be a total loss. (Wait, you paid $50 to get you and your three snotty brats into the theater? I take it back. It is a complete and utter wash on your part.)

This third entry in the long running Ice Age franchise does hit a familiar stalemate, and its bound to remind you of the plight witnessed in Shrek the Third. Quite simply, the writers have run out of fresh ideas. So they go into regurgitation mode. Which is fine, because most preschoolers dig watching the same DVD over and over again, anyway. Each old character is given a personal problem to overcome. When we last saw Shrek, he was struggling with parenthood. That is Manny’s (Ray Romano) indignation here, too. His wife Ellie the Wooly Mammoth (Queen Latifah, who’s lost a considerable amount of weight since the last film and looks smoking hot, yet we’d never know this since she is in cartoon form here) is pregnant, and like Yoko Ono or Marc Anthony, tearing up the pack. That leaves Diego the Smilodon (Dennis Leary) and Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo) to fend for themselves. Diego is mostly relegated to the background, where he looses his Kefi after chasing a young buck. The old bastard is getting slow and useless. There’s not much the writers can do with that, so they turn to Sid for the main bump in the narrative.

Sid is sad and lonely. He’s a little jealous of his friends and their impending bundle of joy. So, when he finds three unidentified eggs, he decides to hatch them, becoming a parent himself. This material is curbing from Disney’s often trite plea for gay single parenting rights, and it will remind you of Sulley’s good deed work as seen in Monsters, INC. Sure, Sid’s sexuality is left openly ambiguous (though according to John Leguizamo, Sid has gotten a girlfriend in all three films, but the directors keep cutting that scene out of the final print). But he plays the ruse up in a lisping, fey manner.

Before too long, Sid is the proud mother of three infant T-Rexs. Daily life swims along smoothly, until the real mother comes looking for her newborn babies. This gnarly beast takes back her children, and in the process plunges poor Sid into an underground layer of lush, green foliage and brutal, killer dinosaurs. Manny and Diego decide to save their poor indolent friend, and the rest of the film becomes this wild, non-stop adventure that is as predictable as any old Sunday afternoon serial.

At the end of the day, everything turns out great. Everyone is back in his or her rightful place, and the tribe has an additional member in one baby mammoth who’ll surely be the star of part 4. Which is inevitable at this point. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs isn’t very entertaining or funny. But the underage droolers will dig it. If you are a lone adult, the film gets a “Boo!”. If you’re dropping the kids off by themselves, it gets a “Whoop-doo!”

(All of B. Alan Orange’s reviews are based on the Boo! or Whoop-doo! evaluation system.)