It would appear moving away from the ice, on top of actually providing us with a little bit of adventure, was the answer all along.

Rating: 6/10 (5 March 2013)

Can a film still be called "Ice Age" when it takes place somewhere that resembles the tropics? For two whole films now, we've followed the adventures of a mammoth; a sloth and a sabre tooth tiger across the barren, icy lands at a time when land and continents intercepted with one another as one great big piece of terrain. There we sight gags to do with fossils and about evolution; second unit sequences involving icicles and would-be water flumes in a state of being frozen solid as well as meek tracts on global warming threatening to burn up all the frost and ice. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a refreshing shift away from such things, the entry that moves things away from the above and into the locale of a jungle, a thriving; bustling zone wherein the crew are dwarfed by trees and shrubbery rather than glaciers and where the threat arrives in the form of dinosaurs. The sense of adventure is more omnipresent than usual, that sense of a space being alien or unfamiliar much more apparent. The answer, then, to the question is "No", but the film is all the more better because of it.
This sense of stark change is actually synonymous throughout the film, and things are genuinely better as a result. Not only has location changed, director of this edition Carlos Saldanha, with the more recurrent Mike Thurmeier, have started pairing the central characters off on top of having one of them face imminent fatherhood. All of this is before the distinct shift in filmic tone and narrative arc – an entry resisting depicting these animals trekking on a one way route across anonymous snowy plains trying to get somewhere, or deliver someone to someone else. Moreover, we're taking a leaf out of one of those old 60's monster movies wherein a bunch of people are stuck in a place time has forgotten; a place wherein strange creatures and dinosaurs rule the jungle dominated roost and the likes of Jackson's King Kong remake as well as 2001's second Jurassic Park sequel have much more recently dared to exploit on grander, bigger budgeted scales.
Gone too is the sardonic wit and general cynicism attributed to Manfred and Mammoth, replaced with a sort of 'goofy impending father' routine as he carries on with where he left off beside partner Ellie at the end of Ice Age 2. He is, of course, part of a group of three including Diego (Leary) and Sid (Leguizamo), the respective sabre toothed tiger and sloth; Diego of whom sees little future in his current predicament with these guys (facing an impending child on the scene/Sid's slapstick antics), and longs for an adventure as gags about old age and domestic suffocation rear up. Wouldn't you know it, Sid goes missing on account of a Tyrannosaurus Rex taking him after he stole, and then observed hatch, her eggs – thus, it's up to these remaining characters as well as the Seann William Scott and Josh Peck voiced quick-fire critters we were introduced to in the second film to tag along and save him. Upon stumbling upon a previously unaccounted jungle dominated world below the surface, they hook up with Simon Pegg's survivalist weasel Buck, who acts as their guide through the terrain. Interestingly, when we first encounter him, it is a recreation of the very instance Sam Neill's Dr. Grant character is rescued from all manner of prehistoric beats by the very boy he is involuntarily searching for in Jurassic Park III. As soon as those gas canisters go off, it is revealed to us right where we are in relation to this new addition and we ease into it in that sense.
It comes as a relief that we can slog through this sort of film once again after the tedious disaster that was Ice Age 2. This is funnier and more exciting, with a lot of adventure to be had out of it. There is an urgency to things this time, a huge dinosaur akin to Jurassic Park III's Spinosaurus is on their tail and that element of chase works better here than it did in number two, when flesh-hungry fish were gobbling up anything foolish enough not to respect the fact there was a massive thaw swallowing everything up behind them. Where things break down in this sense of children and adults liking the same content, however, are in the scenes when Manfred mulls over potential fatherhood; while few people below a certain age will get quite the desired kick out of seeing Buck emerge from a muddy swamp alá Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now.
Few people would argue against the recurring squirrel character Scrat being the funniest thing in any of the films, but where it is often advised in any walk of life not to try and mend things that are not broken, the film decides to revamp his own on-going crusade to finally snare an acorn he's been forever been attempting to obtain. The overlying joke inherent with this skit was always the cruel denial after the apparent security one would obtain what one wants, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs vamping up the core of the gag in their introducing of a female foil for Scrat; a sort of odd mesh of the Cadbury's Caramel Bunny with the jagged, brisk animations that came with the central characters from Disney's 1963 film The Sword in the Stone upon transformation into squirrels. Thus, these sequences have mutated into an odd, borderline bawdy, tease-and-denial routine wherein the laughs come hearty and somewhat regular, but with that nagging sensation at the back of one's mind as one realises this is a kids film. Regardless, the film is so much fun and is so immune to doing any wrong, that they've managed to mess around with the franchise's best and most popular item and still just about get it right.