As in the previous two installments, Ice Age (2002) and Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), the heroes of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs are an odd assortment that have come together as an unlikely herd: Manny the woolly mammoth (Ray Romano), Sid the bug-eyed, anvil-headed sloth (John Leguizamo), and Diego the saber-tooth tiger (Denis Leary). The film returns the additional characters introduced in the second film, including Manny’s wife Ellie (Queen Latifah), who is pregnant and expecting any moment (for those who remember the details of the first film, this is a major event since Manny believed he was the last of his kind), as well as the in-fighting brother possums Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck). The tension this time around is that Manny and Ellie are settling down and starting a family, which leaves Diego and Sid on their own. Diego decides to head out and find his own adventure, while Sid makes the ill-fated decision to raise whatever will hatch out of three large eggs he finds in an underground cave.

Turns out the eggs produce three baby Tyrannosaurs Rexes, which happily mimic Sid’s sloth-like behavior, but don’t fit in very well with the generally peaceful group of mammals (turtles, birds, etc.) with whom Sid lives. And then there’s the momma Tyrannosaurs, who comes out of her underground lair to snatch her young and Sid along with them and return below ground, which means that Manny, Ellie, Diego, Crash, and Eddie must venture into the previously unseen netherworld to rescue their friend. There they find an entire world of lush primeval forests, massive mountains, and lava waterfalls that is populated by all the dinosaur species that should have been extinct millions of years earlier. The world is also inhabited by Buck (Simon Pegg), a deranged weasel with a leaf-patch over one eye who is determined to come face to face with the world’s most dangerous creature, a giant white dinosaur he has named “Rudy.”

Like the previous Ice Age films, Dawn of the Dinosaurs is enjoyable, but still a bit too formulaic (who didn’t see the use of Was (Not Was)’s kitschy ’80s one-hit wonder “Walk the Dinosaur” being used on the soundtrack?). In its theatrical release, this particular entry was buoyed by both the creative use of 3-D, which gives the increasingly detailed CGI-created world a sense of depth and presence, and the generally whacked-out premise, which is a far cry from the previous two installments’ more mundane journeys. Director Carlos Saldanha (who also helmed The Meltdown) and co-director Mike Thurmeier (a supervising animator making his feature-film directing debut) clearly relish the freedom to explore and push the boundaries, which results in the most action-oriented film in the series. The jokes don’t always hit like they should, but there is a pleasant familiarity that mixes well with the sense of adventure to underscore the film’s warm-n-fuzzy proclamations about the nature of family and togetherness.

And, of course, there is always the Scrat (again voiced by Chris Wedge), the buck-toothed squirrel-rat hybrid whose incessant love of the acorn is put to the test when he crosses paths with a female Scrat, affectionately knows as Scrattè (Karen Disher). Their physical and romantic tussles provide constant welcome relief from the story proper, and even if some of the jokes are dragged out a bit too far, they still remind us that well-executed slapstick comedy, the more ridiculous the better, is always enjoyable, even if it makes the rest of the movie look a bit stale.

Copyright ©2009 James Kendrick

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