Better than the last one in the series, but not by much.

Grade: B-

Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Indian Release Date: 03/07/09
CBFC Classification:  U
Running Length: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Cast (Voices): Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, Josh Peck, Simon Pegg, Sean William Scott, Chris Wedge
Director: Carlos Saldanha, Mike Thurmeier
Screenplay: Peter Ackerman, Michael Berg, Yoni Brenner, Mike Reiss
Music: John Powell

It’s quite a wonder that the adventures of these prehistoric animals have now spanned across three movies. The first Ice Age released back in 2002 was amongst the first few CGI animated full length feature films & even though it’s story was more or less inspired from John Ford’s 3 Godfathers (1948), it had quite a few funny moments including a damn cute baby. Since the movie made a ton of money sequels were inevitable. While the first sequel Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (2006) was a major letdown, the new one however manages to do a lot better. It’s not of the quality of something Pixar may make but still as something which will keep kids stuck to their seats, it works just fine.

The plot again is wafer thin & the entire movie more or less hinges on the characters bumbling & tumbling from one situation to another meeting new characters. Ellie (Queen Latifah) & Manny (Ray Romano) are expecting their first child. Diego’s (Denis Leary) feeling he’s losing his hunter instinct & wants to leave the others to regain his “mojo”. Sid (John Leguizamo) in the meantime wants to start a family of his own & happens to find three large eggs below the ground. They turn out to be Dinosaur eggs & that too the eggs of a T-Rex, so when mama comes around looking for the eggs and finds them missing, she’s mighty pissed. She tracks down the eggs (hatched by then into cute little cretins who take Sid to be their mother) & drags them along with Sid down into a ‘lost world’ kind of place where Dinosaurs still exist. The others obviously mount a rescue mission, only to soon find themselves dwarfed in comparison to the inhabitants of the ‘lost world’. It’s here that they meet easily the best of the new lot of characters, Buck (Simon Pegg), a demented one-eyed weasel who’s a dinosaur hunter & has a personal score to settle with a vicious large beast called ‘Rudy’. So off they go to rescue Sid & trouble follows them everywhere.

One of the major improvements over the previous movies is the quality of animation. The addition of the lush jungle scenery gives the movie a certain amount of color which was sorely lacking from the previous two movies. The animation is nice & fluid & the addition of the dinosaurs even though inaccurate by all historical means is a welcome change from the same roster of animals which had become a staple in the movies so far. There are some wonderfully animated sequences throughout which include the chase sequence involving some flying dinosaurs & the story which Buck tells about how he lost his eye.

The jokes are either slapstick or dangerously veer towards making jokes about the male anatomy or homosexuality on more than one occasion. The sections of Scrat (Chris Wedge) the squirrel chasing after the acorn continue in this movie too & with the addition of a female competitor, Scratte, he gets his own little love story. I didn’t really enjoy all of Scrat’s misadventures here but did laugh at a few of them. I had liked them in the earlier movies simply because they weren’t dragged out in the manner they are here. Many a times they simply end up being used as padding for the already short running length.

The real highlight of the movie is the character of Buck (hope to see more of him in future sequels or maybe a spin-off). Most of my laughs came out of his scenes. Another good joke was the spoof of an Alvin & the Chipmunks song rendition done by the Crash & Eddie. Other than Buck, Sid & the possum brothers, Crash & Eddie get some of the best lines leaving the rest of the characters to play filler.     

A movie like Ice Age 3 exists purely because it’s the member of a franchise, the only goal being to milk the cow dry. It has no ambition to excel in any cinematic department or stand apart in this crowded animated field now. It doesn’t have a real story to tell, it’s characters don’t really evolve (nor have they over the last two movies), even it’s humor is more pop-cultural referential than based around the story but it isn’t something unwatchable. With the short running length, colorful palate & enough slapstick jokes it should keep the kids occupied & the maybe even the less demanding adults.


Final Verdict: Better than the second part, but still nothing more than a pleasant diversion.

Grade: B-

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