Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)

You're probably thinking "?" right now and yes, I was too. A little context: I was in Berlin alone last week, and met up with a friend who works at an English-speaking movie theater at the gorgeous Sony Center. While waiting for her to finish her shift so we could see State of Play together, I decided I could use some air-conditioned sit-down time, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was the only thing playing at that time. I've never seen the first two, so this review comes with absolutely no knowledge of this film's relation to the others, no initial ideas of the characters' relationships, and no clue as to how this franchise is popular. I doubt it would have helped.

The premise of this movie is... insultingly dumb, I don't even feel like saying it. But I shall press on, for the sake of blogging (you're welcome). It's the Ice Age, right? Right. And a ragtag group of animals have settled as an improbable herd somewhere... cold. Woolly mammoth Manny (Ray Romano) is all nervous because his wife Ellie (Queen Latifah) is due to give birth any day. He's built a playground and stuff. His friend Sid (John Leguizamo), a supremely annoying, clumsy, and selfish sloth, hopes to get in on the parenting action when he finds three huge eggs under the ice and takes them back to the herd. They hatch into baby T-Rexes, whose mother soon comes bounding out of nowhere to bring them home, snatching up Sid along with them. "Home", it turns out, is a magical, unexplained jungle under the ice in which dinosaurs are still the dominant fauna. Though they are under the ice, they appear to have their own atmosphere and, I guess, sun, since it's a kind of warm tropical paradise. Despite the thin layer of ice that is shown multiple times as its "ceiling". I can't make this stuff up.

Now that every child in the audience is either wicked confused or just blissfully happy to have their dream of sloths interacting with dinosaurs come to fruition, it's time for Manny, Ellie, their tiger friend Diego (Dennis Leary), and two weasly/rodent brother things (I'm not very good with animals, sorry) to save Sid. They soon meet Buck (Simon Pegg), a one-eyed British weasel who's been living alone for a long time among the dinosaurs (who, despite almost every other creature's considerable vocal abilities, can't speak; I guess they are descended from the same silent animals as those squirrels who keep popping up for no reason). He's gone a bit crazy but knows how to survive, so he helps them out and it's all adventurous for a bit, except when Manny is a total killjoy all worrying about his unborn child. Meanwhile Sid is still trying to mother the baby T-Rexes, as their actual mother shows them that she's way more fun. Soon they're all reunited and they fight the biggest dinosaur of them all and a baby pops out and at the end there's a dance party.

This movie is stupid, but has some saving graces. I really liked the character of Buck: he's funny in a non-cliche/safe way, plus he's got mad skills with a tooth knife. I wish he'd been given more to do though. He's really just there to lead the main characters along since they're completely useless. None of the other characters were very interesting, and some were downright aggravating. Diego didn't do anything, Manny just worried all the time and made sarcastic comments meant to amuse... someone. Sid disturbed me. Ellie, as essentially the only female character, mostly just ignored her husband's complaints and carried a baby inside her. Oh and she saved the guys when they got high off poisonous gas in the middle of a cavern and were about to die laughing. Great job, lady, I hope you are starting to re-evaluate your life choices up to this point.

The story, clearly, leaves many things to be desired, but at least it isn't boring. There's always something going on. Unfortunately one of those somethings is this thing with the silent squirrel, whom I recall from the previous Ice Age trailers. At first I was like, hey, I guess it's nice to introduce some purely visual comedy, as that certainly is a challenge. But it went from a cute little 3-minute segment to a recurring sideplot of the film, which I did not expect, and it felt irrelevant and pointless. It's pretty much the "squirrel wants an acorn, but oh no lady squirrel wants it too and will use her vicious feminine wiles to get it!" joke 7 times over. Then (spoiler alert) they move in together and suddenly, being a woman, she is all "move the sofa for me, no not there, there! Time to make your life miserable!" and he's having weird lovesick reminiscences about the acorn. Har.

The animation is so-so. Some of the details were beautiful, especially in the fur of the woolly mammoths and some of the scenery. But the character design rode a strange line between realistic and over-exaggerated, which I found frustrating and unappealing. I know this is a kids' movie, and kids are too stupid to know about anything, so I guess it's not a big deal. Nobody seems to expect impressive animation (or, you know, intelligent family films) from a studio that isn't Pixar. Overall Ice Age 3 is enjoyable enough if you don't care about anything I mentioned here. I'd imagine some kids would like it because it has dinosaurs and characters they recognize and a guy with an eye-patch. I can't say it's horrible because it didn't affect me enough. It just struck me as very dumb, which kept it from being entertaining when Buck wasn't around.

2/5