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ShareIce Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (U)
Director: Carlos Saldanha
Voice-over cast: Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Seann William Scot, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Chris Wedge, Karen Disher, Josh Peck and Simon Pegg
Rating: ***1/2
A T-rex is in hot pursuit of a woolly mammoth. A sloth adopts three dinosaurs in a land of ice. Another mammoth gives birth fighting off colourful mini-dinosaurs intent on a feast, while a waterfall of lava flows somewhere nearby.
After saving a human baby in the first instalment and escaping the near meltdown of the Ice Age, the lovable and unlikely herd of two mammoths, Manny (Ray Romano's voice) and Ellie (Queen Latifah), sabre-toothed tiger Diego (Dennis Leary),sloth Sid (John Leguizamo), and the two opossums, Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck), are back. This time though, they're battling dinosaurs.
Okay, animated movies need not tightly grip the truths of the universe and conform to the laws of science. They can talk, and defy gravity, all to elicit a few chuckles, but this time, the grip is a little too lose. Weren't dinosaurs extinct way before these mammals started roaming the earth?
Well, director Carlos Saldanha wouldn't want us to believe that with a Jurassic Park-like warm land of all kinds of dinosaurs and plants (pitcher plants of a size that almost make a meal of a sabre-toothed tiger and a mammoth), where the creatures are thriving within mountains of lava. All this under a thick sheet of ice, above which is the Ice Age. If you are able to swallow this (quite a big mouthful), the movie is pretty enjoyable.
Manny and Ellie are having a baby. Diego craves a life of adventure and wants to break away from the group. Sid thinks he needs to start a family of his own and stumbles upon three dinosaur eggs, hidden in a layer between the Ice Age and the land of the dinosaurs. He tries to raise them on his own, only to have an angry T-rex mother surface on the ice and take back both her kids -- and Sid.
Sid's friends regroup and venture into dino-land to save their friend. There, they meet an eye-patch- (of grass) wearing, knife- (the tooth of a dinosaur) wielding, pirate-like, slightly deranged weasel called Buck (Simon Pegg), who helps them save Sid.
Buck steals the show with his funny lines and his ultimate aim -- to exact revenge on a monstrous, albino T-rex (Buck lost his eye to the albino, but not before knocking a tooth off the monster and making it his weapon).
Some of the lines in the movie are hilarious, some not so much. But the silent scenes -- like in the previous instalments -- remain authentically charming. Scrat, the plucky proto-squirrel is still battling the forces of nature and luck for his prize dream, the acorn. But this time, he has to also fight off a long-lashed female proto-squirrel too.
The scenes are so intensely funny, it wouldn't be a bad idea for the studio bosses to make a Scrat spin-off. And the 3D adds a new dimension, making the dinosaur-chasing, jumping-off-cliffs scenes all the more exciting. The film will, without doubt, be a treat for the kids, with the adults sometimes laughing and at other times wondering where the joke was.
