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Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
July 5th, 2009
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'Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs' is the third entry in a tired, disposable animated franchise that will, hopefully, not see as many installments as The Land Before Time, unless it gets relegated to the straight-to-DVD market, on which The Land Before Time has thrived, and continues to thrive. Compared to Pixar's efforts, this movie comes up short. Forgettable and unfunny, with hardly an original idea on display.
The three primary protagonists return, prehistoric mammals living happily together; Manny the Mammoth (Ray Romano), Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo), and Diego the Sabretooth Tiger (Denis Leary). Diego should actually be snacking on his two friends, but refrains from carnivorous activity, defying biology and his own primal instincts. Manny and his partner Ellie (Queen Latifah) are expecting a child together. Diego prepares to leave the herd and embark on his own path of self-discovery.
Sid wants a family, like Manny, but cannot seem to find a mate. He does, however, discover some dinosaur eggs, which hatch baby T-Rexes that follow him around, until their mother shows up, wondering what happened to her offspring, and she kidnaps Sid and takes him with her to the land of the dinosaurs hidden beneath the ice. Manny, Ellie, and Diego head there to rescue Sid, with the help of a loony weasel named Buck (Simon Pegg). The persistent squirrel Scrat (Chris Wedges) makes a delightful return, appearing intermittently and stealing the show in his search for an elusive acorn, and meeting a potential love interest in Scratte (Karen Disher), who wants that acorn for herself, and will use any number of tricks to acquire it.
Their scenes are charming and inventive. They are vastly superior to the dull leads, voiced by some major talent. But Romano, Leary, Leguizamo, and Latifah cannot do much with bland writing, which is one of the film's most obvious flaws, along with the mediocre quality of the animation itself. The prehistoric world is poorly imagined, lacks joy and creativity. Buck is obnoxious, consciously modeled, I think on Iago from Aladdin, or Timon from The Lion King, but possesses no comic value, at all.
I appreciated the presence of Jane Lynch and Bill Hader, but they have extremely small roles. Your kids deserve better than this; with Up still playing in most theaters, see it instead. I will not say much about the awful jokes, one of which involves the mistaken milking of a male yak (tugging on a certain part of its anatomy that is confused with an udder), and yes, that gag was incorporated into a PG feature with no apparent objection from the MPAA.
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