Sever meltdown

Rating: 4/10 (3 July 2009)

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't a big fan of the first two Ice Age movies. The first one has a couple of solid jokes back-up with uninspired storytelling and cheap CGI. The seconds fixed any complaints I had with the animation but once again the laughs were futile and ineffective. Here we have Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and with the prospect of 3-D to tantalise our taste buds it's hard not to get excited. But is this fossil becoming extinct? After the events of "Ice Age: The Meltdown", life begins to change for Manny and his friends: Scrat is still on the hunt to hold onto his beloved acorn, while finding a possible romance in a female sabre-toothed squirrel named Scratte. Manny and Ellie, having since become an item, are expecting a baby, which leaves Manny anxious to ensure that everything is perfect for when his baby arrives. Diego is fed up with being treated like a house-cat and ponders the notion that he is becoming too laid-back. Sid begins to wish for a family of his own, and so steals some dinosaur eggs which leads to Sid ending up in a strange underground world where his herd must rescue him, while dodging dinosaurs and facing danger left and right, and meeting up with a one-eyed weasel known as Buck who hunts dinosaurs intently.
Dawn of the Dinosaurs sports some great visuals, sweeping landscapes and phenomenal character design. Everything looks and sounds just as it should. The film spots some fantastic voice acting most prominently from Simon Pegg as Buck, what's trips them up is the lazy dialogue, as much as the trailer tried to deviate away from it, Buck is the focal point of the movie, he's in 80% of it and does a great job in every scene he is in. It's just a shame that by doing this they pushed the rest of the cast forcibly into the background. Dennis Leary who plays Diego has a prominently smaller role than in the previous film and acts as nothing more than a springboard for other characters. Here in lies the problem. The creators on Ice Age 3 have done a great job at capturing the look and feel of the era but have skipped over some serious character arch's, they resolve the main characters efforts but the supporting cast is criminally underused.
The wrighting, unfortunately, is no sharper than that of the first two films. Which is to say it's rather blunt? Characters peak in monotonous one liners, there are fart gags left right and centre and while the audience who feel in love with this series back in 2002 have grown up, the series is still playing catch up. It's a futuristic looking film that feels like it was written way back in 2002. It feels uncomfortably convoluted at times with each character having their own primary motives and suffers from what a lot of threequel suffer from. T.M.S.G.O. Which stands for too much sh*t going on. It's confusing especially for younger audience members. The most disappointing aspect is the 3-D which at times is utterly phenomenal, but there such a rare occasion that if it weren't for the glasses perched on your face you would forget you were watching a 3-D film.
Verdict: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs looks years ahead of its time, it sports great visuals and an impressive vocal cast. The wrighting on the other hand are such in the Jurassic Era with a script stolen from"Animation for Dummies" it's a admirable attempt, but a one that feels older than the fossils it encompasses. Compared to animation giant "Monsters Vs. Aliens" the 3-D is admirable but far from jaw-dropping. 2/5.