Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
  
reviewed by Rad
Bennett
Photo © 20th Century Fox
|
With each new release, Pixar
continues to establish itself as a leader in animation. DreamWorks, though prone to
resurrecting tired franchises, has accepted the challenge and done some very good work
with titles like Kung Fu Panda. But Fox’s Blue Sky Studios seems content to be
last in the pack, churning out yet another tired Ice Age sequel using animation
that often looks more suited for Saturday morning than the big screen.
The only joy in the first two Ice Age movies came
from Scrat (voiced by Chris Wedge), the acorn-addicted saber-toothed squirrel. Reminiscent
of Wile E. Coyote, he and his pratfalls provided much-needed humor in movies full of
half-baked ideas. In this third film, Scrat gets even more time on screen, and he has a
female love interest to boot. Is she playing him just to get his acorn, or is there real
romance afoot? Each interlude sheds more light on their relationship while giving the
audience some pretty big belly laughs.
But Scrat’s antics are still interludes. As in the
first two films, the main story concerns the mammoths, Manny and Ellie (Ray Romano and
Queen Latifa), the saber-toothed tiger, Diego (Denis Leary), and the lisping, loopy sloth,
Sid (John Leguizamo). Ellie is pregnant and about to give birth when Manny discovers three
dinosaur eggs. When the eggs hatch, the little dinos attach themselves to Sid, thinking
he’s their mother. The real mother then arrives and takes her young trio back to a
land under the ice where everything is sunny and lush and where dinosaurs abound. She
takes Sid along too, leading Manny, Ellie, and Diego to go looking for him.
During their search, they discover the lost land -- and
along with it a new character, Buck (Simon Pegg), a crazy one-eyed weasel whose purpose in
life is to hunt Rudy, the most ferocious dinosaur of all. As in the recent Star Trek,
Pegg steals the show whenever his animated persona is on screen. And by comparison, the
other characters become deadly dull.
Whereas Pixar features move smoothly and exhibit masterful
storytelling, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs lumbers along in fits and starts. Even
though the film is considerably shorter than Pixar’s Up, it seems twice as
long. And instead of arising naturally from the story, the jokes seem staged and have
little, if anything, to do with the narrative. Every humorous moment was obviously thrown
in just to get a laugh.
The overall look of the movie is perhaps even worse than
the lack of good storytelling. The animation is poor by today’s standards, and though
the final roll contains multiple credits for "fur," the intricate fur is a ruse
to keep you from noticing the lack of background and foreground detail and the flatness of
both the characters and the overall picture. It’s playing in 3D at some theaters
(though I didn’t see it that way), and the added dimension might help. Then again,
the first two movies looked just as flat, so I doubt it.
Scrat and Buck are the only reasons the rating above
isn’t lower. If Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is worth seeing at all,
it’s only for the Scrat interludes, and you can wait to see those on DVD or Blu-ray.
I’ll bet they’re out before Christmas. |
