Evidence that the Ice Age franchise has run out of steam is clearly evident in the early minutes of the film about a pregnant mammoth, an aging saber-tooth tiger and a sloth looking to adopt. It’s not until the story shifts to the ‘lost world’ of dinosaurs and the appearance of the one-eyed Buck that the movie actually comes to life. When Sid is stolen away by a mama T-Rex after he has ‘rescued’ her eggs, the gang, Mammy (voice of Ray Romano), Diego (Dennis Leary), Ellie (Queen Latifa) and her possum cousins, to go after him. Leading the way is a weasel named Buck (Simon Peg), a Captain Ahab-like character, who saves the day and the movie.
Buck breathes new life into the film and he’s fun to watch. Whether telling the story of his escape from a great white beast or feigning a cell phone call with a stray rock he picks up, Buck steals every scene he’s in. And you don’t really know if he’s delusional or sane, but that’s half the fun. Scrat, the saber-tooth squirrel trying to get his beloved acorn, is still incidental to the plot, but he has more screen time. He’s used as comic relief and as transitions between scenes. This time around, complications arise when Scrat encounters a female who also wants his nut. “Ice Age” Dawn of the Dinosaurs” is certainly not terrible, but it makes you wonder about needing a swashbuckling, one-eyed weasel and some dinosaurs to make “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” interesting. By the way, dinosaurs would have been long gone by the time the wooly mammoth made his appearance. But, hey. Nobody cares, right? 7/2/09
1 comment:
Ice Age is a cute 3D cartoon franchise that the kids have grown to love over the years. The mixture of dinosaurs and wooly mammoths doesn't bother me, after all, it is a cartoon and we can afford a wide latitude with the characters. It seems like the 3D technology is not growing very fast although the kids like it. I would like to see some studio come along and do a "quantum leap" with the 3D factor and really make it exciting. I give this animation a 3 bagger out of a possible 5
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