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"Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs": A Disappointment of Mammoth Proportions
By Ian Lueck
07-06-2009, 12:16 AM |
 I'm not going to beat around the prehistoric bush: Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a disappointment. The first two movies are still favorites of mine; I rewatched them on DVD recently and still laughed quite a bit. But this third one, despite its tropical settings, left me cold.
The film starts out promisingly enough, with the ragtag gang of animals still wandering the wilderness. There's Manny the mammoth, his wife Ellie (who in the previous movie thought she was a possum); Diego the sabertooth tiger; Sid the sloth; and two possums, Crash and Eddie. We learn that Ellie is pregnant and due to give birth any day now. Okay, fine. This will offer a new element to the series (not to mention a sense of urgency as the baby could come at any minute), so I welcomed it.
The problem, however, begins when Diego feels uncomfortable with this upcoming bundle of joy, as he feels that Manny and Ellie will be too busy with parenthood to care about the rest of the group. So he temporarily leaves. On top of that, Sid also briefly leaves, because he wants to see if he can cut it as a father himself. Finding what he thinks are stray eggs, he takes them. It turns out that was a bad idea, as the eggs belonged to a mother T-rex, and in a flurry of anger, she carries Sid and the newly-hatched T-rex babies (who had imprinted Sid as their parent) down to her home below the surface. It's up to Manny, Ellie, Crash, and Eddie (as well as Diego, who meets up with them later) to venture below the ice to a secret civilization of dinosaurs and lush vegetation to rescue Sid.
My main complaint with the film, as you might be able to tell from above, is that the team is split up for too much of the movie. Without Sid's idiocy bouncing off the stoic Manny, we don't get as many funny moments. True, there's an Australian-accented weasel guide named Buck whose strange behavior confuses the more orthodox Manny, but it isn't nearly as funny, largely because Buck's mannerisms seem forced instead of organic like Sid's. He seems like a stereotype of these kind of rugged, adventurous characters who "know the jungle like the back of their paws", and much of his craziness just felt like he was trying too hard to be out of his mind. I also wasn't a fan of the two possums, Crash and Eddie, getting more screen time in this film. They didn't do much for me in Ice Age 2, and made things a bit too crowded at times. Here, they fawn over Buck and make pop culture references, and that's about it. I groaned when one of them sucked in helium and began singing the famous Chipmunk Christmas song. Okay how would a creature from prehistoric times know about something from the 1950s? Can they see into the future? (Similarly, when Ellie says "Yabba dabba doo!" while riding down a dinosaur skeleton, I have to wonder if she personally knew Fred Flintstone at some point)
 There also is a curious and unfortunate lack of pay-off when it comes to Diego. Early in the film, we see him chasing a gazelle. He isn't quite fast enough, though, and loses his breath while the much more agile and fit gazelle struts around him and mocks his efforts. Throughout the entire film, this incident is barely touched upon, so I thought it was just a throwaway sequence. To be fair, we do see a return to this at the very end when Diego has to chase a velociraptor to keep Ellie safe, but I didn't like how they glossed over this for most of the film. By contrast, look back to the second movie: A recurring bit is how Diego is afraid of water. This trait was present in many scenes, as the world was progressively getting wetter, and that made the climax all the better when Diego was forced to conquer his fears to save his friends amidst a flood. Here, Diego's problem feels like an afterthought, and it's underdeveloped.
Finally, the film simply isn't very funny. Oh I laughed a few times (mostly towards the beginning), but certainly not enough to feel I got my $10 worth. It doesn't help that certain gags can be seen coming from a mile away, like when the T-rex first bursts onto the scene, and Manny commands everyone not to move a muscle. Wouldn't you know it, somebody darts across the screen in terror. How many movies have you seen that cliché in? There's another moment that we've seen before, where Diego tries to scare off a dinosaur by growling, and the dino retaliates with an even bigger growl. Furthermore, Sid simply isn't as funny when he isn't with Manny and Diego. His material with the T-rex babies and the mama left me fairly indifferent.
Now, there's nothing wrong with the movie in the visual department. The character movements are still well-done and reflect the nature of the various species; for example, Sid walks a certain way, and Manny likewise has his own plodding gait. There are various facial ticks that give everyone some personality. The backdrops are completely different from Ice Age 1 and 2, giving us something new to look at instead of icy surroundings again. In fact, that first shot of the underground society of dinosaurs is pretty majestic. The gags are again well-timed, with the kind of quick animation that Blue Sky is known for. And the action sequences are directed well enough to keep one's attention. Certainly, there are many memorable scenes in the film, such as the escape from a dinosaur which almost swallowed Buck previously, or the group crossing a chasm filled with helium, or Sid trying to protect his newly-acquired eggs while he sleds down a mountain, or Diego and Manny trying to reach Ellie, who's about to give birth, while a pack of velociraptors close in on her.
 And I should mention one plot thread that really worked well in this movie: Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel who perpetually strives to gather a single acorn, and whose silent-comedy escapades open each film, gets a love interest. Yes, during his latest acorn expedition, he meets Scratte, a pretty female squirrel. Their relationship is an amusing mix of both finding each other attractive and yet fighting for possession of the beloved acorn. I won't give away the ending to this romantic endeavor, but it was highly satisfying and had a "come full circle" aspect to it.
Overall, though, I was let down by Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. The group dynamic wasn't as strong, the jokes didn't work as well, and despite the new location and dangers, it did tend to feel a bit tired. The "Ellie's pregnant" aspect adds a nice touch and I loved the Scrat subplot, but I don't think that's enough to wholeheartedly recommend the film. It's definitely not worth the $10 I paid for it. And with news of Ice Age 4 in development, I worry that the series is being stretched too thin.
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